A record of 1-6 would leave a chip on any program’s shoulder. This year the wrestling team plans to recover from last years dismal finish and push for contention in the FCIAC.
Captain of the team Charles Lomanto ’15 brags of strong athletes on the mat. He named Justin Ludel ’15 and Daniel Kogstad ’15, and stated there is significant talent among other upperclassmen such as Jonathon Maragos ’16, Luke Montgomery ’16 and Matt Prior ’16 .
“I would say that the wrestling team as a whole has definitely gotten better over the past few years and especially over this past offseason,” Lomanto said.
In the offseason, many of these athletes have decided to work with club teams. Lomanto, Ludel, Prior and Kogstad are all on the same club team in Branford called Tugman while Montgomery wrestles for a club called Iowa Style in New York.
In addition, many wrestlers went to a camp at Cornell over the past summer to work with coaches who trained them like college level athletes for over six hours each day. The athletes also gained the experience of working with other athletes from different schools across the United States.
“Cornell was a lot of fun,” Maragos said. “Me and three other kids went for 19 days, which consisted of six hours of wrestling a day. Some of the other kids on the team came up for the five-day program, but overall we all got better and made progress. It was hard work, but we all pushed to improve in the off season.”
One of the challenges the team will have this year is forfeiting the 220 pounds and 285 pounds weight classes due to lack of depth among the heavier weight classes. They hope to overcome this by being more competitive in each match in which they have athletes competing.
According to Maragos, expectations are high as they are expecting a more experienced team this year. Last year, the team was rather young and inexperienced after losing three captains to graduation- Jeremy Sherman ’13, Alex Brown ’13 and Alexander Kogstad ’13.
“I expect us to do a lot better this year. We only lost one senior and some kids put in a lot of work over the summer,” Ludel said. We have a strong freshman class with a lot of experience and all around a better team.”
