The first meet of the year is an opportunity to judge where a team is with their players, where they need improvement and who the starters will be.

For this year’s Waynesburg University wrestling team, things have already seemingly fallen into place as the team won the PAC championship last year and will be returning all but two key wrestlers.

The Black/Orange Wrestle-Offs this past Saturday was an opportunity for head coach Ron Headlee to get a look at his team and see who he will start going to the first meet of the year.

“One of the first things to see who is going to make the team,” said Headlee. “Whatever weight class guys are going to be in and our starters for Wednesday.”

Going into this season, Headlee brought in 12 new freshmen to work with on top of what is an already extremely talented team.

“I’m really excited about the season [with] 12 new freshmen; they’re working really hard,” said Headlee. “We have a good nucleus of guys coming back and I’m excited about what our year can be, definitely our goal is to win the PAC again, finish top three in regionals and take our guys to nationals and get more all Americans.”

These may seem like tall tasks, but Headlee said his team is ready to bring it and it started with Saturday’s Black/Orange Wrestle-Offs that pinned teammates against one another to see who would earn starting opportunities.

There was some dominance from the usual wrestlers, junior Jake Evans in the 285 weight class, senior Tristan Buxton won his exhibition match and sophomore Ken Burns won his 197 weight class match.

Perhaps the most surprising development for Headlee was freshman Mike Mahon, who Headlee was most impressed with during the day.

“Mike Mahon [in the] 184 spot there, [the 184-pound class has] overall the most depth in the weight class and he came out winning that [and] he did really well,” said Headlee. “I thought he probably had a good day—he beat out two really good kids on our team.”

Mahon won two matches, the first against fellow sophomore Adam Rigney and the second was against former 174-pound starter junior Mike Millero.

But overall, Headlee saw the same talent from a year ago with additional strength from its new roster.

“[I’m] really pleased, I thought all the guys that went out wrestled hard, young guys [and] older guys,” Headlee said. “I’m happy with our conditioning.”

The real test for the team, Headlee said, will be this Saturday as they have the Washington & Jefferson Invitational on the road in Washington. He said this will be a true test of where Waynesburg is at and who will be the key starters.

“Saturday we’ll put everyone in in the tournament,” said Headlee. “And that’s one of the other things we evaluate—to see how they do in other competition and you know it’s a lot of teams on our own level. We are excited to get out of our room and wrestle someone different.”