When the wrestling season started last December at Fountain Hills High School, many of the local grapplers on the team where new to the sport. But now, at the end of the season, the young Falcons are …
You must be a member to read this story.
Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.
Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
Need to set up your free e-Newspaper all-access account? click here.
Non-subscribers
Click here to see your options for becoming a subscriber.
Register to comment
Click here create a free account for posting comments.
Note that free accounts do not include access to premium content on this site.
I am anchor
Wrestling season comes to a close
W-1-28-20- (1).JPG
Posted
Joey Postiglione, Reporter
When the wrestling season started last December at Fountain Hills High School, many of the local grapplers on the team where new to the sport. But now, at the end of the season, the young Falcons are starting to look like veterans on the mat.
Fountain Hills’ wrestling season kicked off on Dec. 6 with a two-day invitational at Wickenburg. On the first day the Falcons went 2-3 in their dual meets and, on the second day, Marcus Nelson placed third overall for his weight class.
The Falcons improved in their craft over the months with more wrestlers placing in the top four at individual tournaments and the team finishing 3-2 in its final dual meet on Jan. 22.
In the past few seasons the FHHS wrestling team has struggled with its roster numbers, so head coach Luke Salzman was excited to have a nearly full roster this year.
“It was a fun season,” Salzman said. “We were a young team but we had good numbers so we were able to put almost a full roster together, which makes competing more fun. Most of the guys started out never wrestling and in a few months they really picked up the sport and became competitive.”
Salzman said that learning this sport takes a lot of time but, by the end of the season, he and his coaching staff had seen “many of the new guys start to understand what it takes to succeed.”
There were two wrestlers in particular that stood out to Salzman this season.
“Junior Dom Flynn had a good year,” Salzman said. “He finished with the most wins on the team and was one match away from qualifying for state. He will have a strong senior year next year. Sophomore Hector Leon also improved greatly and is going to be a top contender in the heavyweight division for the next two years.”
Salzman said he was pleased with all of his wrestlers, though, and his favorite memory from the season was his team’s eagerness to learn.
“We had a lot of fun in practice,” Salzman said. “The kids worked hard and were always excited to learn more technique each day.”
While the high school wrestling season might be over, Salzman is moving on to middle school wrestling and, the way he sees it, the middle school program feeds into the high school program.
“We have competitive middle school wrestling starting in March for 6th-8th graders,” Salzman said. “This will really help develop our athletes early so they will understand what wrestling is all about come freshman year.”
