Last season, the UW-Whitewater wrestling team finished 11-6 overall, placing second in conference and 13th at the NCAA National Championships.

After a promising intrasquad meet Friday, Nov. 3, the team has high hopes heading into the 2017-18 regular season.

“It’s good to see our guys competing with each other, bringing out the best in each other…the intensity was good,” said senior Jordan Newman, the team’s only returning national champion. “There could have been some more scoring going on, but that’s typical of people who wrestle each other everyday.”

Other wrestlers seemed to share a similar perspective.

“We’re looking good as a team,” said junior Christian Dischler.  “We have a lot of areas we can improve on, but we’re looking good though. [Should be] a pretty good team this year.”

“No one’s a final product, everyone’s got to make improvements,” said sophomore Eric Khondaker. “Even if you won by pin, you still got to get better at something whether it’s minor details or major ones, physically or mentally…but I’m excited for this year. We got a lot of good guys, it’s going to be a fun time.”

Head coach Ned Shuck recognizes the potential for a standout season this year and plans on pushing the team to make improvements necessary to achieve it.

“Our guys shape wise, our conditioning, continuing to look to score points, we did a good job with that overall [tonight],” Shuck said.  “I would really like to see guys push to get that pin, push to get that tech fall. We need to continue to grow as we step into our first competition on Tuesday.”

Shuck also noted what makes this upcoming season a special one.

“I think most people are most excited about Jordan Newman, having a returning national champ,” Shuck said.  “It’s been a long time since we had that, so that’s exciting news. We have a lot of young guys that have just done a great job working hard in the offseason, some returning national qualifiers, there’s a lot of excitement around our program right now so it’s going to be a fun year.”

The Warhawk wrestlers and coaching staff will look to start off the new season strong this Tuesday, Nov. 7, in their first meet against WIAC opponent UW-Oshkosh.