Dons Make Top Ten Despite Missing Three Starters

Andrew Gomez grapples a Cerritos College wrestler. / Kevin Vasquez / el Don — Andrew Gomez grapples a Cerritos College wrestler. / **Kevin Vasquez** / el Don

By Diana Viera

Missing three of their main starters, the Dons wrestling team came in ninth place in the Santa Ana Tournament at home Saturday.

State finalist Ronald Collister and Eric Roberts missed the tournament along with Landon Myers because of health issues. This left the team with a majority of freshmen, some who have never wrestled before.

Andrew Gomez, freshman, won second place at 141 lbs and overall winning 3-1 matches in his weight class.

“There’s definitely room for improvement, there always is. I need to start working more of the stuff that I did wrong,” Gomez said.

With the majority of the team consisting of freshmen, and only five sophomores, there is still potential. Part of the problem is that, the Dons are unsuccessful at filling up weight classes with enough wrestlers.

“I saw some good promising freshmen,” Head Coach Vince Silva said. “Once we get out three guys, our core guys, back in the lineup we will be giving them our all.”

The Dons were not the only incomplete team. Second place Mt. San Antonio College was also missing a few wrestlers.

“We were missing some of our starters. We did okay, we didn’t have our whole team but I think overall our guys wrestled well,” Mt. San Antonio College Assistant Coach Caleb Flores said.

Fresno City College came in first place in the Santa Ana Tournament, followed by Mt. San Antonio College.
“We made a lot of mistakes but that’s expected. We’re training for December which is the state tournament and this is a trial and error tournament so we learned a lot,” Flores said.

The Dons next wrestling match is Oct. 14 at Cerritos College at 7 p.m.