Winter sports means its wrestling season at FHC, and the Ranger wrestling team rolled into the 2021-2022 winter season with confidence as they went up against two wrestling powerhouses, Belding and Tri County. Although the team lost both head-to-head team matches, it had a few individual triumphs.

The boys fell short to Belding 30-40 and Tri County 26-52. Even though the Rangers didn’t take both teams down as they hoped, their head coach, Brad Anderson, was optimistic about how his team performed. 

“We were very excited to attend the Belding assembly dual and wrestle in front of the student body; it’ll be a great memory for our wrestlers,” head coach Brad Anderson said. “Unfortunately, we came up a little short in a few pivotal matches that did not go our way. However, we had some bright spots tonight.” 

One of the highlights of the day was sophomore powerhouse Grayson Ripmaster, who stands at 119 pounds, going 2-0 in his matches with a pin and a technical fall. 

“He [Grayson] looked really strong and was our hammer tonight,” coach Anderson said. “We anticipate he will have a strong season and lead the team.”

Junior Landon Cooke also went 2-0. As a cherry on top for him, he had a well-deserved victory over a state-ranked opponent from Tri Country.

“Landon did fantastically,” coach Anderson said. “He had a textbook match and ended up pinning a state-ranked opponent. Landon is a hardhat and steel lunch bucket type of guy; he’s gritty, he’s tough, and tonight he has a great win.” 

Similar to his head coach, junior Michael Campbell is looking ahead at future opportunities for him and his teammates to improve this season and spend quality time on the mat.

“I think it felt good to be back on the mat again,” Michael said. “We didn’t do as well as we wanted to, but now we know what we need to work on; we will be ready for our next meet.”

With the Rangers hungry for victories, they go into this weekend motivated to improve at the Forest Hills Eastern Kickoff Tournament on Saturday, December 11. The boys are ready to turn their streak around and come out victorious by the end of the week. 

“We have some things to work on now, and luckily they are pretty basic corrections. We hope to turn things around this weekend and get some team victories in the book,” coach Anderson spoke.