GWU Wrestling Opened Up the 2013-14 Season with the First Official Practice on Thursday
October 10, 2013 | Wrestling
Boiling Springs, N.C. - The Gardner-Webb wrestling team kicked-off its 2013-14 season with its first official practice of the season on Thursday afternoon, October 12th, in the Gardner-Webb Wrestling Building.
"We are excited to finally get rolling here with our official practices. Actually getting to stretch a practice and lay out our plans for the guys with our training cycles and the different phases of what we are looking to do," commented head coach Daniel Elliott. "We have three weeks to grind it out before our first competition, so we got a lot to cover between now and then and we are just ready to get rolling."
The Runnin' Bulldogs hit the mat for the first time as full team on Thursday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. The two-hour practice was the first of many of the next three and a half weeks, as GWU will open up the season at the Virginia Quad Meet on Saturday, November 2nd.
"We have a pretty rough November, as we are all over the place and probably wrestling our best competition the first month so it is going to be nice to see where we are at the end of the first month and reassess and reevaluate where we need to work the most and where we need to keep doing what we are doing," continued Elliott.
While head coach Daniel Elliott and the Runnin' Bulldogs return 16 grapplers that were on the roster last season, led by wrestlers Hunter Gamble, Gray Jones, Robbie Golde, Tyler Ziegler, Cortez Starkes, Davante Andujar, Justin Kozera and Aaron Rabin, the Runnin' Bulldogs' roster is covered with youth from top to bottom with only four upperclassmen and 27 underclassmen which includes 15 newcomers.
Gardner-Webb will count on the lone senior on the squad in Golde, as well as a number of other young returners in Andujar, Kozera, Gamble, Jones, Starkes, Ziegler, Austin Trott, Kyle Ash, Boyce Cornwell and Ryan Mosley to help lead not only the newcomers on the mat, but also the team as a whole as GWU goes through the challenging 2013-14 slate.
"We have one senior on the team and most of the other guys are sophomores or freshmen," stated Elliott. "We are young, but it is probably the most talented group of any other group we have ever had. We graduated five starters from last year and I think this year talent wise we could be better. I expect some young guys to step up and make some big noise this year."
GWU will host only three home matches this season in Paul Porter Arena with all three dual matches coming in Southern Conference action in the 2014 calendar year.
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