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The Millstadt Consolidated School Panthers Wrestling team lost Wednesday to the Fulton Jr High Panthers of O’Fallon 69-47. There were some hard fought battles on the mat Wednesday as both teams showed a lot of grit and determination, but the relatively inexperienced MCS Panthers came up short in their bid for a win.
In just it’s second year of competition, the MCS Panthers show the signs of a program on the rise. In the lower weight classifications, filled with newer and younger athletes, the MCS Panthers dominated the Fulton Panthers jumping out to a 36-0 lead. But as the competition worked it’s way into the middle and heavy weight classes the losses began to mount for MCS. The Fulton Panthers won the majority of the matches in those weight classes displaying greater experience on the mat, not necessarily greater athletic ability. That was demonstrated by the fact that MCS wrestlers gave up only a few pins and Fulton’s wins came by way of points with most matches going the full three rounds.
MCS Panthers Wrestling Coach Tim Allgire may be in only his second year as coach, but he has a wealth of wrestling knowledge and experience behind him. Serving as an assistant coach with the Belleville West Maroons program for ten years and also competing as a wrestler in high school for the Maroons Coach Allgire seems to be the right man to start the MCS wrestling program.
When asked his assessment of his team right now Coach Allgire said, “We’ve got a bunch of sixth graders trying to live in an eighth graders world right now. As you saw today we rattle off wins at the lightweights and then we struggle later because that’s when the eight graders kick in for our competition. Our goal is to keep these kids out and get stronger with each year.”
Wrestling is a very intense, very physical, one-on-one battle between two individuals. I asked Coach Allgire what he thought were some of the benefits for athletes involved in such a deeply personal sport. He responded, “The biggest thing in this sport is the one-on-one competition, no doubt. It’s just you out there and we don’t allow our kids to ever blame the officials or make excuses. You get what you get and go home and look in the mirror if you don’t like the results. We don’t make excuses. We don’t allow it. Our ultimate goal is to have these kids ready to wrestle when they get to high school. We want to win just like everybody else, but as long as we’re doing the right stuff we’re good with that.”
While the MCS Panthers have not notched any wins yet this season they have had some moderate success. Coach Allgire said, “We have placed in a couple of tournaments this year. We placed in the top ten out of sixteen in one and in our tournament we were seventh out of thirteen.”
The following MCS students are participating on the MCS Panthers Wrestling team.
VARSITY TEAM
Billy Anderson, JD Bass, Angelo Caponi, Brendan Caswell, Sam Cleveland, Justin Daenzer, Zach Hanusek, Sam Jasper, Andrew Konya, Ty Lanfersieck, Chase Lehr, Kent Menees, Cody Moynihan, Jonathon Powles, Klay Skaer, Justin Sweeney, Jacob Thrower
EXHIBITION TEAM
JJ Bequette, David Crosby, Jake Donahue, Joseph Early, Jacob Eccher, Chris Gomric, Joe Gomric, Zachary Hayden, Ryan Helfrich, Ryan Johnston, Jeff Kleimaitis, Jacob Kreher, Johnny Lebert, Ben McBride, Colin Morton, Levi Oldfield, Nathan Phelps, Dylan Robertson, Mitch Runzo, Shaun Smallwood, Austin Stumpf, Drake Terveer, Isaac Wilson
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