EAHS Wrestling Preview

Head Coach: Mike Sernoffsky, 26th season.

2007-2008 record: 14-5 overall, 7-0 Section Two. Repeated as Section Two champions. Won the Lancaster-Lebanon League Tournament team title. Lost to Warwick 39-25 in the first round of the District Three team tournament. Sent nine wrestlers to the District Three individual tournament and one wrestler to the PIAA state tournament.

Key Returners: Matt Hoover, sophomore, 103 pounds (30-13 last year); Calvin Anderton, junior, 112/119 (32-12); Antonio Rodriguez, sophomore, 130; Kyle Morrow, junior, 135/140; Justin Lewis, junior, 145 (21-19); Jared Danneker, junior, 152; Adam Zellman, senior, 160 (27-12); Zach Myers, junior, 160/171; David Kennedy, junior, 160/171; Shane Rosenberry, senior, 189 (38-7); Sean Heming, junior, 215; Alex Kirchner, senior, 285 (28-18).

The Bears have a solid core returning from last year’s Section Two and Lancaster-Lebanon League championship team. They will be led by Hoover, Anderton, Lewis, Zellman, Rosenberry and Kirchner, all of whom were district qualifiers last year.

Hoover had an outstanding freshman season and returns to lock down the 103-pound spot for E-town. He won 30 matches a year ago and should be good for 30 wins and another appearance in the district tournament.

Anderton won 32 matches last year at 112 pounds and will wrestle again at either 112 or 119 pounds. He’s a tough wrestler who should be in the 20-win club again this year.

Lewis won 21 matches last year at 130 pounds, but makes the jump this year to 145. If he continues where he left off, he’s another 30-win candidate.

Zellman quietly put together a great season last year, winning 27 matches and finishing second in the Bears’ sectional tournament. He should get to 30 wins this season and make a return trip to districts.

Rosenberry won an outstanding 38 matches last year and will again wrestle at 189. He finished second in the sectional tournament, third in the district tournament and was the Bears’ only state qualifier last year. He should lead the Bears in wins again this season and could make a run at leagues and districts, and should find himself wrestling in the Giant Center in early March in the PIAA tournament.

Kirchner won 28 matches at 285 last year while routinely giving up a ton of weight. He’s bigger this year, but still relatively small for a heavyweight. However, that won’t stop him from reaching 30 wins. He’ll use his quickness to make a lot of noise in the regular season and postseason tournaments.

Rodriguez, Morrow, Danneker and Myers all saw significant varsity mat time last year and will be looking to continue their improvement. Keep an eye on Danneker, a tough kid who could win more than 20 matches for the Bears. Kennedy didn’t wrestle much varsity last year as a sophomore, but is a strong wrestler and might be one of E-town’s breakout wrestlers at 171 pounds this year. Heming steps in to take over the 215-pound spot for the Bears. He is in a tough weight class, but the junior will get the Bears points when they need them.

All in all, this is a relatively young group with only Kirchner, Rosenberry and Zellman seniors. But they’ve still got enough experience to lead the Bears to another successful campaign.

“We’ve got a good nucleus returning, and we’ve got a good group of young kids as well,” said Sernoffsky. “We’ve got decent numbers as well. Thirty kids on the roster is the most we’ve had in a long time. They’re going to have to be good because we’ve got a heck of a schedule this year, which is a good thing.”

Key Newcomers: Owen Bradley, freshman, 112 pounds; Jeremy Rivera, freshman, 125; Andrew Smith, junior, 135; Tyler Lakota, sophomore, 140.

Each one of these four new wrestlers are good enough to find themselves in the starting lineup at the beginning of the season.

Bradley and Rivera are both freshman who should have an immediate impact this season. Sernoffsky is hesitant to put too many expectations into freshmen, but said that both are progressing very nicely.

“I think they’ll come along. I like the way the kids are working and the coaching staff has just been terrific,” he said.

Smith is an experienced wrestler who transferred to E-town this school year. He will give them some varsity experience at the middle weights, where the Bears lost some good wrestlers to graduation. Lakota is another tough wrestler who will jump into the middle weights and battle every match.

Key Losses: Oliver Thayer; Travis Leber; Blake Rosenberger.
E-town lost some very good wrestlers to graduation, including these three district qualifiers. Rosenberger won 37 matches last year, including the individual title at 145 pounds in the L-L Tournament, and was one of E-town’s best wrestlers.

Thayer had a great season as well, winning 31 matches and making it to districts. He was a rock at the 135-pound weight class and has taken his skills to Kutztown.

Leber was a beast at 171 pounds, leading the team in wins with 39 and also making it to districts.

But what made these three so great for the team, besides their 107 combined wins last year, was their leadership. Sernoffsky knows their results will be tough to replace immediately, but he said he’s confident that the returners learned a great deal from them.

“Those are big shoes to try and fill and they will be tough to replace,” he said. “They took a lot of wins with them, and they were good leaders. Now it’s up to the next group to step up to those roles, and they will.”

Strengths: Experience, attitude, coaching.
Returning six district qualifiers is something that doesn’t happen often, especially with three of them being underclassmen. This is a group that has seen success. They’ve won two straight Section Two championships, they’re coming off of a league team championship and they’ve done well in the individual postseason tournaments. They’ve seen what it takes to beat the best wrestlers in the area, and that kind of experience will help them in the wrestling room and will help the younger wrestlers learn as well.

They are also a hard-working, modest group, which has been paying dividends so far in the preseason.

“We’ve got some experience back, which is nice. I don’t think anybody is looking at, ‘I’m a superstar and they’re building the team around me,’” said Sernoffsky. “I think we’ve got a great nucleus of returners and hopefully we’re preparing them well.”

Sernoffsky has been at E-town now for more than a quarter of a century, so you’d be hard pressed to find a coach in the L-L League with more experience than him. And he’s surrounded himself with hard-working, knowledgeable assistants from the varsity level and down through the program. The result has been a strong junior high and JV program, which in turn benefits the wrestlers when they get to varsity (as the Bears’ young wrestlers will find out very soon).

Weakness: Youth.
The Bears have a lot of experience returning, but they also have some very young wrestlers who are about to get their first dose of what life is like at the varsity level. E-town’s youth is not necessarily a weakness for them, but the underclassmen are replacing seasoned district qualifiers for the most part and, as Sernoffsky said, those are big shoes to fill.

But what the fresh faces at the lighter and middle weights give E-town is a chance to continue building on what the program has done the past couple of years. They have seen what the varsity has done lately and those accomplishments have translated into the freshmen and sophomore expecting good things of themselves.

“I don’t want to put pressure on individuals, but if you get over .500 from the freshmen, that’s good,” said Sernoffsky. But the freshmen who are coming up are expecting more than .500 of themselves and that’s good.”

This is a young group that isn’t afraid and that is anxious to get on on the mats and prove themselves. And that alone makes them a dangerous bunch.

Outlook: From a team standpoint, it would be hard to do much better than what E-town accomplished last year. But instead of trying to compete with what last year’s team did, the Bears will be looking to build off of that success and reach higher goals.

“Winning is a habit and losing is a habit,” said Sernoffsky. We’ve told them that winning Section Two in the L-L league is not getting to the state tournament yet. We need to up the ante. And now they’re starting to believe it and they’re expecting to win, individually as well as collectively.”

With a bunch of wrestlers who are capable of finishing near or above 30 wins, E-town should find itself in the thick of the section race once again. The Bears will get an idea of how good they can be very early in the season. On Friday, they begin their year by traveling to Williamsport to participate in the Top Hat Tournament – where powerhouses like Central Dauphin and Cumberland Valley will be waiting. After that, the Bears will face Middletown, Dallastown and rival Manheim Central in consecutive dual meets. All good teams and all before Christmas. Talk about baptism by fire for the underclassmen.

But Sernoffsky said the tough early season schedule is a good thing for his wrestlers. It gets them against quality competition from the beginning and, if anything, will show them what kind of improvements they need to make as the season progresses.

The Bears have a lot of kids on the roster, which makes practices and wrestle offs that much more competitive. They aren’t dwelling on who did what last year, but forging ahead as a group and working as individuals to make the team the best it can be.

“Everybody in here is important. Everyone has an opportunity to challenge and beat someone out,” Sernoffsky said. “I think it’s a pretty good family and they’ll be OK. Hopefully we’ll keep getting more and more kids out because that helps make us a better team.”

A team that enjoyed its view from the top of the L-L mountain last year, and wants to get back there again.