The wrestling team came to school in dress pants and ties last Friday, expecting to leave for Baltimore at one p.m. to participate in the Keaser Classic tournament.

Instead, their plans were drastically altered when they found that they were not allowed to enter the tournament due to the match per week quota. MCPS wrestling teams are only allowed to participate in two games per week, a maximum they had already reached by the time Friday of the tournament.  

“Our coach was aware of the rule, but wasn’t paying that much attention to it during scheduling for the season because it’s so rare that we have to drop out of a tournament for a conflict like this,” junior wrestler John-Luke Iglesias said.

Not being able to attend the Keaser tournament was a big setback for the team. Wrestlers qualify for bigger competitions on a point- based system, meaning that the better they do during the regular season, the more post season competitions they qualify for.

“If we had done well this tournament, we would have great chances later in the season,” senior wrestler Austin Brantly said. “This tournament would have been really great for our starters because it is the easier of our three tournaments so we could’ve had potentially more wins and more points. So now we just need to do well in the next two tournaments.”

With this setback behind them, the wrestling team is looking forward to continuing the rest of their regular season games with their next match on December 22 at 6:15 p.m. at Einstein.