Wrestling preview

The Oak Harbor High School wrestling team kicks off their 2008-2009 season with a double-dual meet against Kamiak and host Mariner HS on Friday, December 5th.
The Wildcat’s head coach is Mike Crebbin, starting his 6th year at Oak Harbor, 4 of them as head coach. He’s originally from Klamath Fall, Oregon, and was the Oregon State Champ at 141 pounds in 1983. He also wrestled at the college level at Oregon State University. Although he’s only been at Oak Harbor for the last 6 years, he has over 12 years of coaching experience. Coach Crebbin is a math and science teacher at OHHS.
When asked why he likes coaching wrestling so much he said it “makes me feel good”. Coach Crebbin is not the sit back and watch type of coach. You’ll find him every practice in the mat room doing the same warmups as the rest of the team, and getting ‘hands-on’ when teaching aspects of the sport. His goal for the year is to have the team in the top 4 of WESCO, and to have fun.
He’s assisted by Joe Brannon, originally of Anchorage, Alaska. Joe wrestled on the varsity team all four years of high school, and has been coaching at the high school and middle school level for 11 years. In the summer, Joe can be found in Alaska managing a dinner train. His goal is to make sure this is a good year for the senior wrestlers.
Larry Falcon is back in Oak Harbor after spending some time on the other side of the mountains. He’s the head wrestling coach at North Whidbey Middle School and is a special education teacher there.
There are two volunteer coaches this year – John Garcia, and Miles Hartt. Miles is an OHHS graduate.
While this year’s varsity team is small in numbers, it’s large in experience, returning about a dozen seniors. The team performed well above expectations last year, especially beating Marysville on their home mat. The team will be led by Captains Chris Neumiller and John Tuttle, with additional leadership provided by sophomore Connar Zimmerman and junior Colton Elliot. There are some new faces on the mat that are expected to perform well, among them freshman Brandon Stratton and Coupeville’s Jesse Tucker.
The JV team will have Peter Esvelt as the primary coach this year. He’s originally from Snohomish where he wrestled for 4 years on the varsity team. He’s a history teacher at the OHHS North Campus and has been coaching for 11 years. He’s also the head freshman football coach for OHHS. JV in wrestling is not like other sports. In wrestling, it’s often not a full team, and seniors are often wrestling on the team, as placement is not by grade level, but by ability. If a freshman beats a senior in a ‘wrestle-off’, the freshman will take that seniors’ place on the varsity roster.
On the mat, he’s looking at some depth in the higher weight classes, but is not seeing a lot of wrestlers in the lighter weights on the JV squad. Even so, he wants other teams to know, after the JV match, that “they wrestled us”. He expects the JV wrestlers to put out 100% in each match, and a goal he has set for the team is for nobody to get pinned. He does have some strong incoming freshmen in Hunter Vail, Justin Everett, Tucker Lundstrom and Brandon Stratton, so there should be some good success on the mat.
The first home meet is next Thursday, December 11th, vs Mountlake Terrace. JV starts at 5:45, varsity at 7pm.