It was just two years ago that Denair High’s wrestling room was made up of just seven student-athletes, most of whom were underclassmen, who competed at novice tournaments over the course of the season. Flash-forward to Wednesday, Denair now has nearly 30 wrestlers, which helped them field a full roster to compete in a dual against Hilmar, which they won 54-23.
The lack of depth has made preseason duals uncommon for the Denair program in recent years, but after qualifying two wrestlers, Evan Coronel and Christian Vrioni, to the Sac-Joaquin Section Division 5 Tournament last season, as well as the explosion in participation, head coach Bryan Herrington felt it was time to for his team to take a step up.
“Denair hasn’t had often this many kids as dedicated as they are right now,” Herrington said. “Starting a youth program a year ago (The Den) has really helped. The Denair community has reached out and been very supportive and behind us.
“We are a growing program and I felt the need to schedule a dual with a team out of league with the numbers we had, and it went well.”
The first four matches didn’t go quite as well, though, as the Coyotes lost them all. Hilmar’s Jack Nunes (113), Dustin Carmo (120) and Scotty Emery (126) came out of the gate with pins. Logan Von Aspern (132) followed the wins up with a win by technical fall.
But then, it was all Denair, who strung together six straight pins.
The six pins came courtesy of Chace Butler (138), Austin Abruzzini (144), Seth Hall (150), Jesse Ruelas (157), Victor Sarmiento (165) and Adrian Enciso (175). The Coyotes added two more wins when Chris Vilichis’ 190-pound match and Coronel’s 215-pound contest were forfeited. Eduardo Zacarias ended the dual with a pin at 285 pounds.
“You know, it started out rough. We lost those four matches at the beginning and then we pinned all the way through except for the two forfeits Hilmar gave us, but we’ve been given up forfeits for years,” Herrington said, acknowledging the struggles of small, growing programs. “To challenge a TVL team and to come out ahead 54 to 23 was amazing.”
As far as expectations go, Herrington said that his team will “shoot for the moon.”
“We’ll see what happens but a league championship isn’t out of our grasp.”
