The Manhattan High School Boys Wrestling team just returned from Topeka High School with the Centennial League trophy after getting second last year. 

“It felt really good,” junior Caeleb Hutchinson said. “After getting second last year, being able to get our redemption back against Washburn last year.”

The team, coming off of their State Championship win last year, has had yet another strong season, showing their strength and consistency as a team

“I’m seeing a lot of competition that my teammate wrestled last year, so I can just watch the film on that,” senior Landon Dobson said. “Because we are State champs, I feel like we have a target on our backs.”

While they won State last year, the team lost a lot of their senior competitors, forcing some new wrestlers to step up to the plate.

“It’s been a lot of learning,” junior Cameron Coonrod said. “There are a lot of new kids on the team this year, not a lot of seniors, so it’s been more of a learning path for everyone. We’re all just trying to get back what we had last year, another title.”

The team has had many large, multiple-day tournaments to prepare for the final stretch of their season. 

“We just had a pretty long month of January, we’re just now wrapping it up with tournaments at Dodge City, Newton and Hays this past weekend,” senior Ben Uher said.

While January has been busy for the team, they walked out of it feeling rewarded, especially after both Hutchinson and Dobson snagged their 100th career win a week apart from each other.

“It felt really good. It just shows all the hard work starting to pay off,” Hutchinson said. “I’m just going to keep ramping them up. We’re not finished at 100, the goal is to get over 150.”

Now that they are League champions, their next goal is to take home the Regionals trophy on Feb. 21 and 22, and set themselves up well for the State championship on Feb. 28 and March 1.

“Just putting our head down and working every single day,” Hutchinson said. “Three weeks left, so we’re really just working on going back, watching film and working on what we need to to compete with the best.” 

Now that the season is wrapping up, current seniors reflect on their experience as a wrestler for Manhattan High School. 

“It’s a weird feeling. I’ve been doing it for so long, but we are just ready to dial in for the last stretch here and finish the season out strong,” Uher said. “I’m really close with a lot of those guys. We build some good friendships doing that and it’s just a great culture on the team.”