As Tecumseh coach Scott Herbert reflected back on his teams’ pair of wins recently against Piqua and Wayne, he keep telling himself that much of their recent success are coming from kids who can’t even drive themselves to practice yet.
Herbert and the Arrows defeated Piqua 45-36, and a lot the reason is due to the outstanding wrestling from freshmen Lucas Rogers and Kyle Wells.
Rogers weighs in at 132 and Wells at 126 and both opened the eyes of Herbert last week.
“Lucas picked up a big pin at 132 against Piqua and Wells knocked off a returning district qualifier,” Herbert said.
“They are both hard working kids, Kyle has been behind Hunter Donnan and has wrestled some varsity matches. He actually won the county match. He is coming into his own and wrestled well.”
“Also he won the Centerville Freshman tourney last weekend, which was a really big event.”
“Lucas has been a nice surprise,” Herbert added. Both have stepped up and wrestled some good varsity matches.”
Another freshman who has done really well according to Herbert has been Alec Hall at 138.
“He was third in the freshman tourney and also won the county meet,” the Tecumseh coach said. “He is 10-5 on varsity. Those 3 kids have wrestled for awhile and stepped into a varsity role earlier than maybe they should be but all have wrestled well.”
Tecumseh also defeated Wayne 46-30 where Herbert again praised Rogers for another solid match.
“Another kid Tommy Rowe is doing well at 15-4 at 125 on the season,” Herbert said. “We are strong with Joey Campbell who is also a returning district qualifier along with Donnan. We don’t have a lot of returning kids, and those three are all returning letterwinners. Rowe has stepped up his game and taken a big leadership role. We have a great group of sophomores who have been thrown into the leadership roles and have done a nice job.”
“For a young team, I am pleased how well we have done so far.”
Tecumseh performed really well at the county meet recently, in fact earned first and second place in two weight classes (126,145) plus in a couple of others they placed two in their top three.
“Our JV kids stepped in and even though they couldn’t score points, they still knocked off some kids,” Herbert said. “We didn’t have 106 and heavyweight and still won the event.”
The Arrows also only took five kids to the Centerville freshman tourney this past weekend, drawing kids from everywhere.
“Out of our five kids, we had a first, second, third and fourth place finish in different weight classes,” Herbert said. We finished 6th as a team out of 20 with only five kids.
“The future looks good at Tecumseh, and that’s a big credit to the middle school coaches Darrell Hall and Anthony Watson,” Herbert said. “They do a great job and sent up some quality kids. If they all stick it out our future looks really good.”
State duels start tonight for the Arrows, and they are at Ben Logan this weekend.