By OLIVER CORPUS
Staff Writer
Boys Wrestling at the JV and Varsity level competed at the Millikan Duals, placing ninth out of 12 teams, a good score considering the team did not have a full lineup, leaving them undermanned.
“We played against seven different schools from all around Southern California some even all the way from San Diego…,” said Coach Takemura, when commenting on the expansiveness of the tournament. Although the team lost the majority of their matches on the first day, they came back hard on the next day, raising their placement drastically.
One JV wrestler who performed well was the junior wrestler Hector Reyna who won five out of his seven matches. The Varsity wrestlers also competed strongly, the most notable being freshman Dylan Ohashi, and junior Kea Sadri who only lost one match in the tournament.
The girls attended a tournament going on at the same time at Beckman, most notably Lorena Egea who in the past years was victorious in most of her matches, and in the Beckman tournament won in the first ten seconds. Coach Takemura even noted that she could potentially make state finals this year.
Many other freshmen also competed at the tournament so “many of our new wrestlers had a chance to experience the tournament environment and intensity of the match,” said Ohashi.
Something that the team needed to work on was “…getting the technique down and staying active the whole time they are wrestling,”  Coach Takemura said. “I want them to be making something happen and not letting their opponent do something to them.”
Although Senior Captain Nathan Ohashi was unable to attend the meet, he had high hopes for team’s performance going into the read of the season. “expect us to do well as a varsity team going into league especially later into the year… as a frosh/jv team we have a lot of kids with potential that could do well in league finals and duels,” said Ohashi.
Overall, the first Tournament was a good learning experience for the team to get to know what they can expect this year. “This tournament was more about getting mat time than competing for a championship because we have newer guys that are wrestling varsity their first time, but it is also their first year doing wrestling too.  Our goals for this year are to keep improving over the course of the season, win league, and qualify as many guys for CIF,” said Coach Takemura when commenting on what the team could learn and take away from the Tournament.