April 2020

Greeting West Wrestling Families; now that we have completed our season, but were unable to gather for one last hurrah, I am writing this year-end wrap up to look back and celebrate our season, as well as announce our special awards. 

This year we wrestled more individual tournaments than dual meets which limited us to only 13 dual meets and we ended up with an 8-5 record. Our 5 losses were to teams that were in the District Duals, and those teams were in the top 16 teams in the region. Our highlight match this year was our win over Downingtown East, in their gym, which was really an exciting night.

We reached some exciting milestones during this season:

Our Senior Class

During the Rockyard Duals, in our match against Ridley, Chase Mielnik recorded his 100thwin. Chase also crushed the pin record, out of his 38 wins 32 of them were by fall, to bring his career total to 84. Chase finished his career earning his first state medal, finishing 4that the PIAA Championship.

Maximus Hale tied the Downingtown West win record at 156 on his final match of his great high school career. His also is the first wrestler in West history to win 3 regional titles and 3 state medals.

4 other seniors contributed throughout the year to help us be successful. Grant Hanak was a full-time varsity wrestler collecting 14 wins and falling just short of a regional berth in a very competitive weight class. Greg Chamberlain was a varsity fill-in before injury sidelined him in the middle of the season. Kane Hayford fought injury all season and did not get to see much action and was only healthy for 1 match. Pat Cusack, who had put together a great career, was looking toward achieving his 100thwin this season, but was sidelined due to an injury during his football season. Therefore his role this year was limited to moral support and encouragement for his teammates, which he did with grace.

Our Junior Class

Our Junior Class was headlined by Matt Micale checking in with 27 wins and becoming a regional qualifier and falling just short of qualifying for states in a very balanced weight class. 

Dan Lilley registered 17 wins and was one place short of being a regional qualifier. 

Ryan Gallagher missed some time in the middle of the season due to illness but had a very much improved season from last year. He was only 2 places away from being a regional qualifier. Although one of the highlights of the year came against Downingtown East with Ryan’s hard-fought match against Spencer Uggla. 

Matt Wolf and Gage Gwiazdowski both spent time in the varsity lineup contributing to our success. Justin McDowell finally made the varsity lineup on the final weekend of our season and racked up 2 wins and only 1 loss.

Also in our Junior Class were our team managers, Emma Richmond and Tess Bernhard. Emma kept the books during our dual meets, kept the clock for wrestle-offs, kept track of equipment and attendance, and helped out with taking pictures during the matches. This year she also took the job of designing and making sure the programs were printed and available for all home matches. I think everyone will agree she did a great job. Tessa was our team photographer. She took the picture for our team banner and took pictures at all of the matches and had them uploaded to Shutterfly for everyone to view. Tessa also created our end of year video which we will get out for everyone’s viewing pleasure. I think everyone will agree she also did a great job.

Rounding out our Junior Class were Jackson Gear and JJ Rosa who did not get much mat time due to injury.

Our Sophomore Class

Heading our Sophomore Class is Dom Findora with 74 wins over the last 2 years. He has his sights set on that 156 win mark. A mark that took 15 years to set and tied 2 short years later and possibly meet or eclipsed in only 2 more years. He is also on track to be our first 4 time state qualifier. 

5 other Sophomores saw varsity action this year. Mateusz Suchecki at 120, Ben Hinrichsen at 132, Zack Borkowski at 152 and 160, Kurt Worley at 170. Matt Zhao had to wrestle at 170, 182, and 195 because we had so many injuries in that area of the lineup that Matt would weigh-in wherever we needed him to wrestle. 

Vince DeChick and Evan Taylor were 2 more Sophomores honing their skills with JV matches in order to help the varsity in the future.

Our Freshman Class

This year we had 8 Freshman and all of them saw varsity matches and 6 of the collected wins. Collecting the most wins was Mason Hale with 17. Mason came to life the 2ndhalf of the season by getting a big win against Downingtown East and a couple of weeks later battling his way through Districts making it to the finals which earned him a trip to Regionals. Close behind Mason was Ryan Note with 12 wins. He also did his best wrestling in the 2ndhalf of the season. Ryan got 7 of  his 12 wins in February and battled at districts falling 1 place short of a trip to regionals. Close behind Ryan was Harrison Hayford with 11 wins and yet one more freshman wrestling well later in the season and placed 6that Districts. Nick Bournazel wrestled well at 106 and tallied 5 wins. He was a bit undersized and he hopes to be fulltime varsity next year. Caleb Pate took the majority of the matches at 120 and secured 3 wins. Andrew McGeehan wrestled 160 collecting 1 win before being sidelined with an injury. Freddie Bivens got one varsity match to add to his many JV matches. Olive Karam our lone female on the team also had one varsity match. She saw a lot of JV action where she triumphed the majority of the times. She also went to the girls state tournament where she went 3-2.

We had a very successful year and are graduating some very heavy hitters. Max and Chase will be leaving some big shoes to fill but I think we have some guys who will be willing to try to fill that void. 

Lastly, we would like to recognize a few of our wrestlers with our special awards:

Rookie of the year goes to Mason Hale.

Most improved, although we had many wrestlers who could have earned this, Ryan Gallagherwas the one that topped the list.

Coaches appreciation this year was earned by Matt Zhao.

Finally, we wanted to recognize most valuable wrestler. Often we struggle to pick one person for this award and the year was especially difficult. It was actually too difficult to choose one, so we went with two – Chase Mielnikand Maximus Hale.

Thanks to everybody for a great season and can’t wait for next year to see what new record(s) we can set.

Thank you

Coach Breese