After a season where the San Benito wrestling squad finished with a 3-3 record in league dual matches, the Balers look to start the postseason on a much brighter note.
The Balers begin that playoff trek Saturday at the Tri-County Athletic League championship tournament at Palma. San Benito will send 13 wrestlers to compete at the annual tournament to earn a berth in the Central Coast Section tournament.
With six spots available for each weight class – only seven teams compete – San Benito head coach Brian DeCarli expects to send most – if not all – of his wrestlers to the CCS tournament a week later.
“We should. We should send all 13,” DeCarli said. “We’ll get all 13 there. Our league is so strong, so we have a high level of qualifiers. The biggest thing about this weekend is making weight and staying healthy.”
DeCarli expects his 13 wrestlers to do just that, and possibly upset favored wrestlers from Gilroy and Palma.
“This is the strongest league in the section and this time we have wrestled every … probably five or six of the top programs in this year’s section,” DeCarli said. “So in the postseason, we are excited and we are just happy to be here now. It actually means something. We put in all the time to get here with a lot of young kids – bringing them to the point where, you know, where it means something now. We are looking forward to getting out there and seeing where we stack up.”
Despite finishing .500 in league dual meets, the team has started to wrestle better than it has all year. In a warm-up to the TCAL tournament, the Balers finished in 19th place out of 44 in the El Camino Colt Wrestling Invitational in South San Francisco.
All six wrestlers won a match during the tournament. Two wrestlers finished in fifth place.
DeCarli expects the success to carry over in Salinas.
“We are looking forward to it and the kids are, too,” DeCarli said. “For the most part we are in pretty good health and pretty good spirits. It’s such a long season and a lot of weird things happen when you get to the postseason. You see a lot of people that were high for a long time start cracking because it’s it. It’s a long season and everybody is kind of beat up at this point. There is a big type of attrition aspect to it.”
He continued, “You’ll see a lot of hungry kids have success now.”
And with the Balers labeled as underdogs most of the year, the team is hungry for success.
“With our guys, they have been hungry all year,” DeCarli said. “Success for them has been in small bits, here and there. We all expect to win and they expect to win. We have been hungry for a while. Now to get in the postseason, we are going to start seeing more wins than losses. We are building for this year but we are also building for next year.”
The tournament begins at 10 a.m. at Palma High in Salinas. It is expected to continue until 3 p.m.
Baler wrestlers at the TCAL tournament:
108 Elijah Riddle
115 Patrick Ippolito
122 Tobias Sherman
128 Jaime Aleman
134 Robb Rodriguez
140 Dominic Cortes
147 John Espinosa
154 TBD (Canes / Coelho)
162 Daniel Rodriguez
172 Tim Castillo
184 Jacob Rea
197 Ricardo Sosa
222 Alex Gonzales
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