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New Wrestling Season is Almost Here The 2023-24 wrestling season is almost here. Action officially gets underway the first weekend of December but the Bears don't hit the mats for competition until Saturday, December 9th when the boys team hosts the Brian Bealer Memorial Bear Duals. For the first time in the 19 year history of the event, 12 teams will be participating. Conestoga, Pennsbury, and Perkiomen Valley will be competing in the tournament for the first time. See the links on the right if you want to volunteer to help make the Bear Duals another great event. The team will compete in two other tournaments in December with the King of the Mountain and the Bethlehem Holiday Classic. The schedule has 3 home league duals with Spring-Ford on January 3rd, Norristown on January 10th, and Methacton (Senior Night) on January 17th. They will face Owen J. Roberts and Perkiomen Valley on the road this season. The rest of the schedule features the Parkland Winter Duals, Souderton's Big Red Duals, the PAC Championships, and the Whippet Duals. The section tournament will again be at Perk Valley while the regional will be held at Oxford Area HS. For the girls team, last season was the first official season the girls program at Boyertown. In May, the PIAA voted to official sanction girls wrestling so this upcoming season is the first as an official PIAA sport! While the team continues to add girls, this year's schedule will feature just individual tournaments. Their schedule is subject to change, but as of now they will be competing in tournaments at North Penn (December 9th), Central Mountain (December 17th), Governor Mifflin (December 28th), Souderton (January 13th), and Jim Thorpe (January 20th). The girls state championship will be held alongside the boys at the Giant Center in Hershey. The rest of the post-season schedule will feature a District 1 tournament and a regional but the dates and locations for those events haven't been finalized. The middle schools get underway in mid-December. Both teams will head the Hamburg individual tournament on December 16th and then two duals tournaments in January (Saucon Valley and Boiling Springs). The annual East/West match will be at West this season, on Friday, January 19th at 3:45 PM.
New fundraisers including NEW Spiritwear open until Nov 22nd A new season brings new fundraisers for BAWA. One of these is a new Boyertown Wrestling spiritwear online store that's open from now until November 22nd. Check out all the great items and get your order in before it's too late! The "Pin to Win" fundraiser is back for another season. Check out all the details at the link below. More fundraisers will be available later, but you can check out the page linked below for some of the details. All of these fundraisers benefit wrestlers in the Boyertown area from youth up to the high school.
Sheridan places 7th in the state
On Saturday night at the Giant Center in Hershey, junior Gavin Sheridan stood on the podium and received his first PIAA state medal. Sheridan placed 7th at 133 pounds after going 3-2 over the 3-day tournament. Sheridan's tournament started with a 5-3 decision victory over Gabriel Ruggieri of Connellsville in the first round on Thursday evening. In the quarterfinals on Friday evening, he dropped a 3-2 decision to Cael McIntyre of Bethlehem Catholic to fall into the consolations later that night. Needing a win to secure that first state medal, Sheridan won 6-3 over Nazareth's Charlie Bunting to keep his season going. In the fourth round consolation match on Saturday morning, Sheridan dropped a 1-0 decision to earn a place in the 7th place bout on Saturday night. In that placing match he defeated Ruggieri once again, this time by a score of 3-1. Overall Gavin went 3-2 with all the matches being decisions and the largest margin of victory being just 3 points. It is the state tournament after all.
Sheridan finished his junior season with a superb record of 46-4, while his career mark now stands at 94-17. He's a 3-time state qualifier. His 7th place medal gives Boyertown 37 medals overall from 23 different wrestlers. The streak of 28 years with a state qualifier is currently the 10th best active qualifier streak in the state. Rapp competes at the PA Girls state tournament
While she went 0-2 in the tournament and didn't place, it was a great experience to compete with the best in the state. While she's not the first female BASH wrestler to compete in the state tournament, this was the first year that you had to qualify in order to wrestle in the tournament.
Now that the PIAA is expected to soon officially sanction girls wrestling, the future is looking bright for every girl who dreams of wrestling and competing for a state championship! Boyertown officially approves girls wrestling!
Boyertown becomes the 44th school in PA, the 2nd school in District 1, and the 1st school in the Pioneer Athletic Conference to start a girls program. The sport is currently not a PIAA-sanctioned sport, as the PIAA is looking for at least 100 schools to sponsor girls wrestling before sanctioning it. The SanctionPA effort is working hard to get to that mark, and Boyertown is doing their part to help. |
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Freshman Madalyn Rapp was a late add to the 118 pound bracket for the 2023 MyHouse PA Girls State Wrestling Championships after some other wrestlers had to drop out. This allowed her to compete on Sunday, March 12th at Central Dauphin HS.
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