By Emily Carroll – Staff Reporter

The Jonathan Law wrestling team is starting off the year with lofty individual and team goals.

The Lawmen opened up their season with a loss to rival Foran, but have since fared well at their Wallingford tournament and against Hand. The team has been led so far by senior captains Max German, Sean Berg and Tim Rebentisch.

This year’s practices have changed based of the teams they face and to have more time to work on things as a team.

Since German has many years of experience, many freshmen on the team are asking him for guidance to look for ways to be better each day.

“I’ve always wanted to be a leader of the team that has the most wins over any other team in the school,” German said.

Berg doesn’t have much experience, but found the interest with encouragement by the camaraderie of the team.

“It’s interesting, I have all these new freshman looking to me for advice,” Berg said.

Another standout wrestler this year for Law is senior Rachel Escobar. Being the only girl on the team this year doesn’t stop Escobar from wanting to meet her goals.

“I have been really into sports ever since I was young and did a lot of soccer and karate,” said Escobar. “However, that wasn’t aggressive enough for me so I decided to join wrestling.”

Wrestling with the boys at first was a little intimidating for Escobar, but after a lot of practice the team took her more seriously and treated her like any of the other guys.

“They started to view me as a competitor instead of just some girl,” Escobar said.

A goal that many members of the team have is to place at the Class M state tournament. At the end of the season, all the schools in Class M come together for an elite tournament to qualify for states.

“We are aspiring to achieve 20 or more wins this year and take four or more people to the open championships as well as possibly win the B division,” said assistant coach Mr. Ruzbarsky.

According to Ruzbarsky, going to the extra step and competing in the off season is the best way to get prepared. All this year’s senior captains have done this to make themselves strong competitors.