Head Wrestling Coach Kyle Rodewald told me that besides assistant Tucker Taylor, “Samuel Cox will be the volunteer assistant. That way, we’ve got somebody the right size and younger than me and Tucker to wrestle with Daryl. It’s actually going to be really good. He’s getting ready to get into shape for the Air Force. So it’s a win-win. You have to get in shape and, at the same time, whip Darrell into shape; that worked out pretty darn handy. They are good friends, great practice partners, and everything last year for senior years.”
Coach Rodewald is “Just excited to get started again. We’ve got returners that every wrestler last year was a divisional placer. We had nine state qualifiers, so we’re bringing back a veteran squad, even though many of them are still only sophomores. We’re still a young team, but we’ve already got a lot of state experience and big tournament experience under our belt.
“We’ll have our Big Sandy meet two weeks before divisionals.” After that, “we have a quick tournament in Malta, followed by the divisional the next weekend.”
Assistant wrestling coach Tucker Taylor said, “Right now, we’re at five girls and five boys, so we’re at 10 kids, which I think is more than we’ve had in quite some time. We’ve got the girls with experience, a good group of girls.”
“We’ve also got the same group of boys coming back, other than Sam Cox, who graduated. It’ll be fun. Hopefully, everybody stays healthy!”
The first wrestling meet is on December 6th in Cascade.
Pioneer Boys Basketball Head Coach Rhett Simonton told me, “We have a bunch of young, young kids this year—a bunch of sophomores and freshmen. A lot of kids have the opportunity to prove themselves. There are a lot of kids that, if they put the effort in, can get in minutes playing. I’d like to build a little bit of depth on our team. They are a good group of boys.”
Ella Jurenka will be Rhett Simanton’s assistant coach.
Travis Baumann wrote me saying. “I’m really excited about the new season. We are returning all but one of our players from last year’s State team, and we have added two high school girls and four 8th graders! We have also added two new volunteer assistant coaches to the program, Laci Keller Christensen, and Ann Favel.” Ella Jurenka will be Travis’s assistant coach as well. “We also added two games against perennial powerhouse Winifred! The 9C is always very tough, and getting to play Winifred and DGS in the 8C and Cascade in the 10C will give us great regular-season competition! With these girls going to State last year and making it to State this last weekend in Volleyball, we are super excited about this season!
Both programs would really appreciate as many fans in the gyms as we can get for both home games and away games!” For both the boys’ and girls’ Pioneer Basketball, their first games, both JV and Varsity, are against Winifred in Big Sandy on December 6th.
