Amherst High School offers many athletic opportunities, but one of the school’s greatest sports is wrestling. The people who make it such a great sport are the coaches and the captains.
This year Amherst wrestling is getting a new coach by the name of Max Villnow. Team captains include Gabriel Helbach, Ephraim Anglemyer, and Hunter Biadasz. They have plans this year as captains to win the conference title. Students should give wrestling a shot because, according to Anglemyer, “It’s fun because you get to push your body to the limit and work so hard that your body shuts down.”
Captain Hunter Biadasz, weighing in at 195 this season, says that wrestling is a small program at this school, but he is going to try and convince people to come up to the wrestling room for a couple practices and try it out and if they don’t like it then they don’t have to do it. Biadasz’s personal goals are just as good as his team goals. He would like the team to try their hardest to place high in conference and perhaps go to state as a team. As for a personal goal, he said he would just like to place high in conference.
Anglemyer says that having a new coach poses a new challenger. However, he believes that it will all go well as long as the wrestlers push themselves and take live wrestling seriously. Anglemyer believes that if the team can do that, then the team can make it past regionals and qualify for the sectionals. Anglemyer is going to help fill the weights by making sure that people are comfortable with moving around and he hopes that they can stay on weight by planning ahead of time. When asked how he would encourage people to join the wrestling team, Anglemyer said, “I will ask them to join for a little while and make sure they can really see what the sport is like, and if they don’t like it, then they can feel free to leave at any time.”
Three-year wrestler Gabriel Helbach, coming in at 170 this wrestling season, says that the best way to get someone into wrestling is to ask if they’re in any other sports like football and explain to them that it can help to make thenm more flexible. “I used to be 220, not flexible and unathletic, then I got encouraged by Owen Nelson to join wrestling and that helped me to get more flexible and more athletic for football,” says Helbach.
This will help with what Helbach believes to be the biggest downside to the team — the lack of people which brings problems such as not being able to fill all the weight classes. Helbach has a big rival that he would like to beat this season in the form of the Weyauwega Warhawks because “the coach is a meanie head,” says Helbach. The Weyauwega tournament is always one of the biggest tournaments in the season because they are big team rivals. Helbach believes that something that could better help the people in the crowd to understand the sport is to come up with cheers and just pay attention to the fights and do as much research as possible.
The Amherst wrestling team has come a long way over the years and these captains intend to help overcome all of these problems the team may face during the 2023-24 season. The team is looking to expand its competitive base with an amazing group of captains who genuinely care for the sport and want to help to make it better.
