HIGH SCHOOL WRESTLING PREVIEW: Even better

Defending champ Jeff believes it can be better

BY GREG MENGELT

Several wrestlers return for a Jeffersonville team that won its fourth sectional championship in school history last season.

The Red Devils, who beat Southridge in the first round of the regional then fell to Castle in the regional title match, should be especially strong at the lighter divisions.

Alonzo Shepherd was a sectional and regional champion and went 38-9 as a freshman at 103 pounds last season.

Junior Ronaldo Weekly was a semistate qualifier as a sophomore at 125 pounds. At 112 pounds, Curtis Smith captured a sectional crown as a junior last season. Jeff’s 119-pounder, Devon Miller, was a sectional and regional runner-up as a junior.

Weekly will likely wrestle at 135 pounds this season.

Jeff’s most successful returning wrestler is Caleb Browner. Last year as a junior at 171 pounds, Browner went 39-6 and placed sixth at the individual semistate.

“We have the same goals that we have every year and that’s to be state champs,” Jeff coach Danny Struck said.

Smith, Weekly, Browner, Miller and Coty Hendricks were all-Hoosier Hills Conference champions a year ago.

“We’re pretty excited about the number of kids we have returning,” Struck said of practices that have involved as many as 70 wrestlers. “It gives us a lot of experience and a lot of depth.”

The Red Devils should be sectional and regional contenders again in 2009-10. But they will have to find a way to replace Brett Walker, Alex Bailey, Darnell Graham, Tyler Tatgenhorst and Jon Clark, all of whom wrestled in the regional last year. Clark and Walker were regional champions.

“You never can replace kids, because every kid is an individual,” Struck said. “The kids filling in for them are very good. They will be juniors and seniors filling in for them. Half of our lineup is different, but we shouldn’t look much different.”

CHARLESTOWN

The four-time defending Mid-Southern Conference champions have a new leader in Adam Doherty.

Doherty, the 1998 and 1999 state champion at Jeffersonville, takes over for longtime head coach Tom Kendrick, who led one of the strongest programs in Southern Indiana the past several years.

Doherty has plenty to work with, including Jeff Stotridge, who finished 40-3 last season — with a loss to the state champion and two losses to the state’s third-place finisher — and finished ninth in the state in the 119-pound division last season. He will likely wrestle at 125 pounds as a senior.

Taylor Newcomb, who will wrestle at 145 points, was a sectional champion last season and a semistate qualifier, as was Mark Daugherty, who will wrestle at 152.

“I hate to put a target on them, but I can see all three of them wrestling at Conseco (Fieldhouse in the individual state meet),” said Doherty, who was an assistant under Kendrick for the past four years. “I have high expectations for those guys.”

Although the rest of the Pirate squad is young, Doherty said he expects his team to be competitive with Scottsburg and Corydon Central for the MSC title again.

“I hope for another conference win,” Doherty said. “Scottsburg is much older than us, so we’ll have to beat a more mature team. But we’ve set that as one of our major goals this year.”

NEW WASHINGTON

With only eight wrestlers in the entire program, New Washington is focused on individual success.

That success begins with Josh Sampson. Sampson went 44-3 and was the regional champion last season and returns for his senior year with high expectations in the 152-pound weight class.

Sampson is joined by two other wrestlers that third-year coach Jeremy Campbell said were “looking pretty good.”

Campbell said he “expects good things” from 135-pounder Lane Massingham, who finished fifth at the Jeffersonville Sectional last season.

“He definitely has some wrestling ability,” Campbell said of the junior.

The Mustangs also have a newcomer who is showing promise in freshman Brady Mennach, a 119-pound wrestler.

“We’re working on individual placement,” Campbell said. “That’s our goal as far as being competitive. That’s the team mindset.”

PROVIDENCE

Semistate qualifier Jacob Golembeski returns as a senior for what is otherwise a very young team.

Golembeski went 26-8 at 160 pounds as a junior and assistant coach Patrick Fleming said he expects more out of the multisport star in 2009-10.

“I think he has a lot of potential,” said Fleming, who will take over for Phil Cook as the head coach at Providence at the end of this season. “I think he’ll have a really productive year.”

Otherwise, the Pioneers are unproven, but Fleming likes his young wrestlers, especially the talented sophomore class.

“They’re fairly inexperienced, but I think with their raw talent they could prove to be really good wrestlers in the next couple of years,” he said.

CHRISTIAN ACADEMY OF INDIANA

In just its second season, Christian Academy went 7-6 as a team and placed five wrestlers in the top six at the Jeffersonville Sectional in 2008-09.

This year, CAI coach Mike Brown believes the Warriors can have their first four regional wrestlers.

Brown said he believes that Corey Neel, Caleb Delbridge, Levi Speth and Ethan Banet — all juniors who have wrestled in all three of the program’s seasons — can at least finish in the top four and get out of the sectional.

“I think all four have an equal chance,” Brown said. “We’ve progressively gotten a little better. We’re hoping that this year is the first we take one or two kids (to the regional).”

Brown, who was an assistant coach at Jeffersonville, and CAI assistant David Neel, who came from Floyd Central, have every intention of turning the Christian Academy program into a championship program.

“As a team, we’re improving both individual-wise and team-wise,” Brown said. “When we came (to CAI), both Coach Neel and I were coming from serious programs and we had no other plan for this program than to be a serious program.”

With 14 wrestlers, the Warriors will still not fill out a complete team in 2009-10. But they have been able to add two or three wrestlers in each of their first three years.

“We’re still not an experience level that we’re going to compete with Jeff and Floyd and New Albany, but we’ve been successful against schools our size,” Brown said. “We’re building up toward (being successful in) the tournament series.”