Herschel Sandler Quotations

I almost wanted to take the weekend off because we were so sick and banged up, but the guys really wanted to wrestle. They wanted to learn how to wrestle with adversity.

Kevin is a great kid. I never doubt his commitment to his team and how hard he works, but to have an injury take you out of this is tough on the athlete. I feel for Kevin.

I would say this tournament was a little stronger than the Valley of the Moon based on individuals. You can't always look at teams. I think having Healdsburg, Will C. Wood (Vacaville) and Hogan (Vallejo) was great. Vacaville also brought some good kids.

I think we looked a lot more unified and were much more focused on taking care of business.

We had a lot of guys take second. It was a total team effort to win the championship. We have tough individuals.

We always see each other at tournaments but we never get a chance to be in the same gym and meet head-to-head. I think it's great for wrestling in the valley. It should pique interest amongst the younger kids to want to compete at their local high school. I was really pleased with today.

It was two big guys going at it real hard on the edge of the mat. Ivan tried to stand his ground at the same time the opponent was pushing. Ivan's ankle just got twisted in a bad way.

It was a great year. We had 22 kids on the team. It was one of the bigger teams we've had. Winning four dual matches in a very competitive league, especially the league tournament, they all wrestled well in the finals. We have a great group of eighth-graders coming in next year. We have probably nine really solid eighth-graders. This will be one of the better freshman classes. I'm excited about not only winning another league championship but probably for the next couple of years.

It was a great weekend for us. You have to have it all together at the end. You could be 40-0 coming into these things and all of a sudden you're not going to state.

I'm real proud of these guys. They wrestled hard through a lot of adversity. I've had as much fun with this team as much as any team I've ever had. I'm perfectly at peace with how the season ended. I just hope next year we get it all together again.

All of our young kids really got better this year. The future looks bright. We have really good freshmen coming in. We have JV guys that are ready to step in and make a difference. We have 10 or 11, I think, pretty good kids. We're not going to fall off the pace very much.