The Concord and Bow High wrestling teams will open their seasons on Wednesday night in similar positions. Both teams have big holes to fill from last season and both have the young talent that could fill those holes, but only time will tell if it actually happens.
The Crimson Tide graduated the two wrestlers who won Division I and Meet of Champions titles last year, Isaac Gladey and Noah Giffard. But Concord returns junior Jack Sargent, who was runner-up at 126 pounds at D-I and MOC, junior Abbas Abdulrahman (second in D-I at 195), junior Trey Fortier (third in D-I at 132) and senior Sam Wagner, who missed almost all of last season but was a D-I and MOC champ at 106 as a sophomore.
“We lost some studs from last year, but we’ve got a lot good kids back, a big senior class with 15 seniors, and a lot of guys who have been around for a while,” said Ham Munnell, now in his 24th year as Concord’s head coach.
Last season, the Tide finished second to Timberlane at the D-I championship for a fourth-straight year and second to the Owls at the MOC for a fifth-straight year. It will take lots of work, but knocking off Timberlane, which has won 18 of the last 19 D-I titles, in coach Barry Chooljian’s last year is Concord’s goal.
“This is Barry’s last year, so this our last shot at beating him, so we’ve got to get it done,” Munnell said.
Sargent, Abdulrahman, Fortier and Wagner are all expected to provide big points for the Tide this year, but they will have help. Senior Ethan Comeau is back after finishing fourth at D-I and fifth at MOC at 120 last year. Junior Keith McFetridge was fourth at 113, senior Khan Amiri was fourth at 145, senior Evan Berube was sixth at 152 and junior Peter Sargent was sixth at 195 in last year’s D-I meet, and all four of them are back.
Munnell also has high hopes for seniors Ghana Darjee (106, 113), Cortland Miller (160), Alex Galatis (160), Joseph Gimaranzi (170) and Tristan Sharich (220); sophomore Kody Rashed (182), who was a middle school state champion; and freshmen Jamari Arzu (113) and Austin Wells (220), although Arzu dislocated an elbow in preseason and may be lost for the year.
The Tide opens its season at Keene on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
■Bow is coming off its first title in program history after claiming the D-III crown last February. That campaign will certainly give the returning Falcons confidence, but Bow lost a lot of points from last year’s squad with the graduation of Zach Anderson (D-III champ at 126), Alex Boufford (D-III runner-up), Matt Nichols (D-III third-place), Ben Boufford (D-III fourth) and Aidan Hyslop.
Plus, Bow may be without sophomore Skylar Hattendorf. As a freshman last year, Hattendorf finished second in D-III at 120 and became the first female to place at the New Hampshire MOC when she took fourth. Hattendorf then won a silver medal at the women’s freestyle Cadet World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, in the 57-kilogram weight class this summer. But as of now, her position on the Bow team is still an unknown.
Those are all big losses for the Falcons, but they’ve still got their sights set on defending their D-III title.
“We’re still in the hunt and I still expect a top-3 finish,” Bow coach Brock Hoffman said. “I think Plymouth is the team to beat. I kind of went through the points of what we have returning and what they have returning, and we’re a little behind them out of the gate, on paper, so we have some ground to make up.”
While there are lots of questions for this year’s Falcons, there are also some known commodities, starting with senior Will Zachistal. He was the D-III champ at 285 last year and looks even better this year, beating the heavyweights from Timberlane and Pinkerton Academy in the preseason.
Junior Wyatt Reinhardt was the D-III runner-up at 106 last year and he’s looked good this preseason. Senior Alec Schultz was third last year and should help Bow with points at 132 or 138 this season. A.J. Bliss (152, 160) and Daniel Scott (172, 180) are the other wrestlers Hoffman will be counting on early in the season as the rest of his team comes together.
The Falcons will open their season on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at John Stark. The Generals have a new coach, Jeff Kaplan, the long-time Franklin wrestling coach. Stark will probably be in rebuilding mode this year, but the Generals do have a great block to build around in junior Thomas Johnston, who was the D-III champ at 170 last season.
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)