By John Zetmeir
Dodge City Daily Globe
For the first time this season, the Dodge City High School wrestling team is expecting to field the full varsity squad that head coach Lars Lueders anticipated to have coming into the season on Thursday when they travel to Great Bend.
The Red Demons, who took fourth place this past weekend in Colby, were without two varsity starters. Lueders is also expecting senior Cole Trent, a previous state qualifier, to wrestling this weekend.
“We expect everybody back and we are excited to see what the whole team will look like which we haven’t had so far,” Lueders said.
After the dual at Great Bend, the Red Demons will travel to Hoisington for the Cardinal Corner Classic. The two meets this week will be the last bit of competition that Dodge City will face before winter break.
“I think just going into break healthy is number one,” Lueders said. “Having a good mindset and just making sure that we have cleaned up our basic fundamentals so that when we go into break we can do some more advanced technique and really get after it.”
After the first two weeks of the season, the Red Demons are ranked third as a team in class 6A. Dodge City has seven wrestlers ranked in the top-six of their respective weight classes.
“We’ve never really been ranked this high as a team going into Christmas,” Lueders said. “So I’m excited to see what we are going to do when we have a pretty tough team to begin with.”
The Great Bend Dual Meet is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
