Following up their 2022-2023 league championship season, this year’s wrestlers seemed unphased by the loss of many seniors and bounced back with an impressive season for a young team. The bulldog wrestlers ended their season with qualifying 8 boys and 6 girls for CIF.
Boys wrestling finished the season with an impressive record of 13-4 with their only loss in league being to their cross town rivals Ventura High School, the 2024 League Champions. A notably close match was against Rio Mesa, where the score was tied going into the last match. To Buena’s tribute they won the final match in overtime with a 37-34 final score.
“I thought we would be rebuilding after we won the league the year before, we were senior heavy and we lost over 20 seniors on the team.” Head Coach Eddie Martinez said.” For us to be in contention for the league championship this season was a great surprise and great effort on the teams part.”
This year Buena Wrestling had junior Rylan Pedroza qualify for state. Rylan Pedroza became a 3x league champion, placed 2nd at CIF, 5th at masters in order to earn his ticket to state.
“Having Rylan make it to state was like the cherry on top of the season…that was the next step for him.” Martinez said.
This was the first time a Buena wrestler has qualified for the state tournament since Elijah Jackson in 2017.
“Winning that match to qualify for state was a moment of my will power as I finally succeeded at the Masters tournament…making it to state was accomplishing my goal for this year’s season.’ Pedroza said.
He faced extremely difficult schools as he was unseeded going into the tournament, leading him to go up against the best kids in his weight right away.
“Going to state was a humbling experience because I didn’t find any success there but was very fun as I had my teammates helping me to get ready for the tournament,” Pedroza said.
With the girls program still growing and being on the smaller side they were still able to have two league champions, qualify 4 girls to CIF. The two stars of the girls team Lily Bossoletti and Sofia Kawano both won the league championship this season. Bossoletti also was awarded the lower weight MVP at the League Championship Tournament.
“It’s such a bummer that we had such a small girls team,” Senior captain Lily Bossoletti said. “I wish we had more girls to really give us a fair chance in duals since head to head we do so well.”
Coach Martinez and the other Buena wrestling coaches are currently working to find and recruit new girls to wrestle this upcoming season.
Overall, this year’s team exceeded the expectations of coaches and showed how Buena Wrestling can bounce back from last year’s season.
