By Andrew Wong and Rex Ly
Winter season is approaching soon and the wrestling team is back with a fresh new start. With returning members and new recruits joining the team, Coach Bacillo Monterroso ensures that he prepares every team member with strong training from the basics until the members in the wrestling team are prepared for upcoming matches. Every week, the team meets up during Tuesdays through Thursdays. Generally, the team starts practice at 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and each day of practice is about two hours long.
“I was interested in joining and I wanted to know what wrestling was like. I want to be able to wrestle properly because I know I’m not ready for actual matches yet, but I’m expected to be a little experienced at wrestling,” stated junior Alan Nguyen.
The training is expected to last until February so that every single member of their team can prepare for their first competitive match. The team are preparing to compete against Fremont, Silver Creek and any other high school in the East Side Union District.
However on such occasions for practices, team members can participate in events called the Duel Week which is another term for a team scoring system. During duel week, team members and other teams from different schools compete in skirmishes. When a wrestler wins not only does the wrestler score, but it goes to the entire team however the points awarded are dependent on the conditions, unlike other sports such as boxing and golf.
“Our future plans for the Piedmont Pirates is to get back into the A league. We started off as that in the A league, as the highest competition 3 years ago, and we’re escalating now this season to get back up there. We have a few big tournaments coming up as well as dual meets. The tournaments that we’re shooting for are around January 7th and 14th. We want to win all of our home matches to show some good techniques, so we’re strengthening and conditioning in techniques and adding everything into the game plan,” said Coach Monterroso.
Not only team members can participate, but everyone is welcomed by the team to participate and join the club. If you’re ever interested in the sport of wrestling, consider joining the wrestling team. Even if you have no experience at all the PHHS team welcomes anyone who may want to join.
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