November 5, 2021

Wrestling Season Begins with Entirely New Coaching Staff

Levi Zelmer

The wrestling season has kicked off, and the team is looking for some very good performances to follow up on a pretty decent season last year.

The wrestling program brought in a whole new coaching staff. Steve Swinson, who has nearly 30 years of coaching experience, is the new head coach. Swinson has made coaching stops at Eastern, Marion, Northwestern and Lewis Cass High Schools and now feels that Manchester is a perfect fit for him.

The team’s schedule is looking very tough this year, as the athletes open their season with an invitational at Adrian College on Nov. 6.

First-year wrestler Caidyn Baumann is excited for this upcoming season. “I very much like the new coach that we have,” he said. “He is very familiar with the game, and I definitely feel like he knows what he is talking about.

“We all have been preparing for this season very hard,” Baumann continued. “We know what it will take to be a very competitive team, but for me I have been working out and making sure I do a lot of extra conditioning so I can stay in the best shape.”

Baumann thinks that the season has gone so far. “We didn’t really know what to expect when we found out we were getting a new coach, so everybody was a little concerned and we were just hoping we would get a good guy, and so far I think we did that,” he said. “I think we will definitely compete well this year.”

Baumann notes that the team can still work on its chemistry. “I think if everybody actually knows a little bit about each other it will help us in the long run,” he said. “So, I think if we get that figured out, we will be pretty dominant.”

The wrestling team is not a very young team. They have a lot of returners who are on the roster from last year. So that could definitely help them out when it gets deeper into the season. “The upperclassmen do a great job taking us younger guys in and making sure they know what we are doing,” Baumann said.