By Garrett Gallego

Staff Writer

From Friday, Dec. 9 through Saturday, Dec. 10, Gabrielino High School’s (GHS) varsity wrestling team faced off against several schools in a preseason tournament. The competing high schools included Alhambra, Hoover, Cerritos, Rosemead, Damian, Claremont, La Cañada, and John Glenn.

The tournament ended with the Gabrielino Eagles ranking third out of all the other schools competing in the tournament. The first place rank was nabbed by Rosemead High School, and second place went to John Glenn High School.

Before tournaments, the wrestling team undergoes a rigorous training regiment at practice every day leading up to the matches.

“We do a lot of training, laps on the track, two or three hours going over moves, and an hour of either wrestling each other or something else to help out our stamina,” Peter Villa, senior, explained.

The Gabrielino varsity wrestling team has only been in its preseason phase so far and the league season will begin next week following training.

“I really think that our training is what helps us out at games, we take it very seriously. Because in the end, your training is what you’re solely relying on in there,” stated senior Anthony Ponce.

In reflection of the team’s most recent tournament, Coach Rafael Moran was proud of the team’s performance and optimistic about the season, but agreed that there are things that can still be worked on.

“We wrestled better on Saturday than we did on Friday, and we have a lot of room for improvement and we’re getting better,” stated Moran.

In recent years, the main rival wrestling team to face GHS has been Arroyo High School (AHS). Although the Knights did not compete in any of the recent tournaments, they will be facing off against Gabrielino soon, in the upcoming league season.

The Gabrielino wrestling team has a positive outlook for the season to come, and will continue to work hard to achieve their goals throughout the 2017 wrestling season.

“I actually think that we’re going to do really well this year,” stated Villa regarding how he felt the year was going to go for the team. “Everybody works hard and just puts their head out there and I think we’ll go far.”