Goshen High School senior Morgan Huff is a returning district tournament qualifier for the Warriors.

Goshen High School senior Morgan Huff is a returning district tournament qualifier for the Warriors.
By Chris Chaney
Sun staff

A strong contingent of returning district qualifiers headline the 2014-15 Goshen Warriors wrestling team roster that head coach Dallas Rise hopes can duplicate, if not surpass, the seven Warriors who advanced out of the sectional tournament last season.

“We’ve only wrestled dual (matches) and we are 4-3,” Rise said. “We lost to Reading, Kettering Fairborn and Williamsburg and we beat Batavia, Arcanum, Greenville and one other team. We haven’t wrestled any bracketed tournaments yet. We really don’t get into the meat of our schedule until after the New Year.”

With more than a month under the team’s collective belt of sanctioned team practices, Rise laid out a solid lineup of district and state tournament hopefuls with holes filled primarily by freshmen who the coach expects to get a baptism by fire to varsity wrestling.

Kicking off the Warriors lineup is Morgan Huff at 106 pounds, the team’s lone female wrestler. Huff has committed to wrestle next year at the collegiate level for the University of the Cumberlands.

“She’s a senior and a returning district qualifier,” Rise said.

Huff finished in fourth place in the Southern Buckeye Conference last season and third in the Division II sectional tournament.

Sophomore Lucas Fastovich will move up in weight from his 113-pound weight class to somewhere around 132 pounds, Rise said. He finished on the podium in the SBC and was the fourth-place finisher at the sectional in 2014.

Alan Fastovich, Lucas’ older brother, will wrestle at 138 pounds this year, also a move up from his weight class last year of 126 pounds. Alan was also a podium placer in the league and the runner-up at the sectional.

Junior Trey Atwood will fill in the 145-pound class for Goshen. He was the Warriors’ lone league champion last season, wrestling at 138 pounds. He finished in second place at the DII sectional.

Senior Tanner Rahm returns this year as well, wrestling at either 152 or 160 pounds, the coach said. Rahm was the third-place finisher at 132 pounds in the SBC and a runner-up at the sectional last year.

Senior Max Glass will stand pat at 195 pounds for the Warriors again this season. He made the podium at the SBC Tournament and was the fifth-place finisher at the sectional tournament.

Jacob Moore will wrestle heavyweight for Goshen.

Rise said he’s looking to those seven for the biggest contributions this season as well as holding out the highest hopes for postseason success.

Up to this point, with so little competitive wrestling on the schedule, Rise said he and his team are working in the wrestling room on technique and cardio so they’ll be ready to go come January.

“On Jan. 3, we go to Simon Kenton, then we have the Madeira Tournament (Jan. 9),” Rise explained. “We have the Hammer and Anvil Invitational at Western Brown (Jan. 17), then we go to Miami Trace and by then, we’re almost to league, sectionals, districts and state.”

Goshen will face a big ask going through the first month of 2015, but the goals for the Warriors are clear while they prepare for the postseason.

“We just want to stay healthy,” Rise said. “All of our kids, they work hard. We go to the club one night a week where they get to wrestle kids from other schools. We want to stay healthy and be competitive. We’ll train and hope to stay healthy and hopefully, it works out for us.”