2006-2007 Pre-Season Chat
Head Coach Brian Hills

Thursday November 30th  7:30 - 9:00 PM


What does the lineup look like?

We just had wrestle-offs and we are not complete yet. Still some to wrestle tomorrow. We are also missing Jon Uhrin until toward the end of the year as he suffered an ankle injury last week in practice. We have a lot of good depth in the middle weights which will allow for movement when necessary. Lineup as follows with many possible changes.

103 Rodney Harnett 9th

112 Cody Kelly 10th

119 Sam Fuchs 10th  Luke Taylor 9th

125 Robbie Miller 12th

130 Corey Brown 11th Curtis Reynolds 11th

135 Steve Nestor 12th Brandon Maun 11th

140 Kaine Kulka 10th or Rex Cooper 11th or Tony D’urso 10th

145 Aaron Nestor 12th

152 Mike DiGregorio 11th or Ryan Dawes 11th

160 Jonathan Uhrin 12th (when back from injury)

171 Lawrence Beckman 12th

189 Mike Miller 11th

215 Will Ringer 10th

285 Corey Shields 11th

 

Why are you not facing greenville this year?

We are facing Greenville this year at the Ultimate Duals in Brookville. All the teams invited this year will be wrestling each other. We agreed that wrestling 3 times last year was a lot and used the opportunity to wrestle someone else. That gave us the opportunity to schedule Bald Eagle Area. We will more than likely wrestle Greenville several times this year anyway.


Good luck this year---beat Bald Eagle, I don't like them here in Lewistown.  Do you have any shirts, etc. for sale this year?  How about some homemade cookies?  Say hey to John T.    Alan Peters in Lewistown

Thanks Alan. It’s always good to hear from you. Yes we have some shirts and I’ll let my wife know you’re interested. Send me your e-mail to bhills@pymtele.net. John  and I are definitely suffering withdrawal from the Xmas cookies from our good friends in Lewistown. Hopefully you’ve seen we have done OK by making some changes in our schedule. Hope to see you again. Tell all hello.
 

Congratulations on a great season last year. Can you top that performance? By the looks of the pre-season rankings, it looks like you can..

We had a great team with outstanding senior leadership last season. Those seniors made the rest of the team accountable and to stand up. This years group is similar and has set their goals high. We have some guys that need to know it’s their time and at Reynolds we always have the unexpected turn into very good. 

 

Coach Hills, since this match with BEA is so big and our gym only fit 900. Why didn't we think to get the match moved somewhere else. With the way everyone is talking, there is not going to be any seat left by Friday. I'm glad i got my tickets pre-order!!

There was discussion of trying to move the match to a college facility similar to the old days when we wrestled at Edinboro and Westminster. 1974 & 1975. We figured BEA had never been to Reynolds and we wanted to have the match in our home gym. There were still 200 as of last night. I am sure it is lower now. Two pre-season nationally ranked teams meeting in Reynolds is really great and something for our community to be very proud of. Reynolds 24 by Amatuer Wrestling News and BEA 23 by WIN magazine.


Coach, that was a great write up on you and Casey Taylor earning the awards. :-) Congratulations

 Thanks so much! The National award came totally unexpected being named Region 2 Coach of the year out of 8 regions nationally. My thanks specifically to Tom Elling for the opportunity. Casey getting nominated and selected for the PA HOF is really the accomplishment as he is our first wrestler from RHS to be inducted. Coach Neal Lineman is the only RHS person currently in the PA HOF.




Less than 48 hours before your meeting with Bald Eagle Area, what do you project your lineup to be when you face the Eagles Saturday afternoon?

We will look for the best opportunities against this great team. You can see somewhat our lineup from question #1. We have and are currently doing our homework to see where the best positions will be to give us any advantages. This is a great team that returns 11 or 12 letterman from last years AAA State Runner-up tournament team. They lost some great seniors as we did but return a very nice nucleus as we do also. They have some very impressive people in Wright, Struble and Paswall plus numerous District 6 placers They were the NW Region AAA Champions last year.


how does this years team matchup to last year's team.

Very similar although I would say we are inexperienced at the Book-ends. 103 and 285. We will start Rod Harnett a freshman at 103 and Corey Shields at 285. Corey is a junior that has been in the background of Mike Edwards the past 2 seasons and has looked better than expected. We are pretty solid from 112 thru 215 with almost a letterman at every weight class. We also have tremendous depth in the middle allowing for numerous strategic moves.
 

 are you only wrestling one day at the ultimate duals? how many matches will you wrestle?

Yes one day this year with 5 matches on Saturday.


any injuries this year so far?

We have already been hit with the injury bug before any competitions. I guess the intensity in our practice room backfires on us sometimes. Jonathan Uhrin had surgery on his ankle yesterday and will be out until mid January. We have had several minor injuries that are just enough to mess things up also. Injuries to key personnel you can never expect.


do you think this years team will do at ironman and the beast?

We hope to finish in the top 15 at both tournaments again. Not having Jonathan will hurt our chances. The Ironman has expanded and added more good teams so it will be harder to finish as high as we have the past 3 years but our goal is to do so. Either way it is having the opportunity to wrestle in those environments and not where your team places that means the most. For those of you that have never attended I would encourage you to do so as these elite tournaments are the real deal. Pa States is minor compared to them.


what weights do you see your line up at the end of the year? I thought Cody would be at 103lbs, he would have a good run at the championship as would the Nestors a weight down. GO RAIDERS on a great season.

Possible end of the year 103 Harnett 112 Kelly 119 Fuchs 125 Robbie Miller 130 Corey Brown 135 S Nestor 140 A Nestor possibly. Kaine Kulka, Rex Cooper 145 A. Nestor possibly. Mike DiGregorio 152 Ryan Dawes 160 Jon Uhrin 171 Lawrence Beckman 189 Mike Miller 215 Will Ringer 275 Cory Shields My guess and purely speculative as injuries and a lot of things will happen before then. We also have Reynolds, Maun, D’Urso and others available.


who will be the top teams in district 10... in the state?

Within D-10 I believe we have excellent competition. Ft Lebouef will be stronger than some expect, Greenville, Harborcreek and Saegertown I expect to be strong. Grove City has a strong nucleus back and I felt they were a very good team last year. Mercer is always competitive. Statewide- Northwestern Lehigh has most of their team back. Additionally Burrell, Mt Pleasant, Northern Lehigh and Line Mountain are expected to be good. I also see Berwick as additional competition as they have dropped from AAA this season.




Coach Hills where do you think your stiffest competition will come from in D-10 any surprise teams that maybe lurkin

Please see the last answer. Also we may now have a point available as West Middlesex has once again screwed our schedule up. If anyone is interested in a dual match please let me know and maybe we can get something scheduled. I just know it is very hard to schedule something once the season has started. We also need some Junior High matches. Casey is attempting to get several teams together at RHS on 12/30/06. Let us know if you are interested. Thanks.




are there any other new wrestlers this year besides robbie miller?

Not that I am aware of.


Coach, how close are we to the return of the epic Rey-Gnv battles of the late 60's early 70's?

 I think the staff at Greenville is doing a nice job of building their program. It appears they have been gearing toward next year as the year they attempt to overtake us. Needless to say those are the years I like most. We would love an underdog role and I guess we haven’t had a rebuilding year for awhile. I do caution that we will only lose 5 starters this season (counting Jon Uhrin currently injured) and do have some special 8th graders coming up. The other thing to remember is longevity and to remain good over a long long period of time.


Will there be any exhibition matches vs BEA this saturday? And if so possible who?

We expect to have 6-8 JV matches on Saturday. The match starts at 2:00 pm with the JV bouts.


I would like to thank all of you for the questions you have submitted and hope you enjoy the upcoming season.