ROCHELLE — The Rochelle Hub varsity wrestling team had high expectations after finishing 18-4 during the 2019-20 season. But despite all of the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, which included postponing the 2020-21 season to the summer, eliminating the IHSA State Series and competing with other sports happening simultaneously, head coach Alphonso Vruno felt the team excelled and made the most of the unprecedented circumstances.

Rochelle finished with a 21-8 overall record, falling one victory shy of tying the single-season wins record. The Hubs went 5-2 against Interstate 8 opponents during the season before finishing fourth in the conference tournament. Four seniors will depart from the program including Ben Harvey (27-2), who broke both the career pins record and the career wins record this season, as well as Noah Messer (22-7), Ivan Pineda (24-5) and Grant Thompson (24-5).

“I was really excited going into the season,” Vruno said. “We had an idea of where this team could end up and as the season progressed, we had our football players come back and our kids went above and beyond our expectations. We kept rolling and scoring victory after victory. They blew my expectations away as well as the expectations of some of our assistant coaches.”

Six wrestlers received All-Conference recognition from the Interstate 8 this season, with five wrestlers (Harvey, Pineda, Thompson, Caleb Nadig and Tommy Tourdot) earning First-Team honors while Messer took home an Honorable Mention. Nadig (23-2), who recently won the IWCOA 2A Rock Island Super Regional, headlinesRochelle’s returning varsity starters next season.

“Something we had struggled with before the season was giving up bonus points,” Vruno said. “We’re trying to change that and the reason we were so successful this season was that we became a team of pinners. We had kids up and down the lineup who found ways to put kids to their backs. We talked to the kids about ‘Big Moves Only’ and they bought into the mentality of trying big moves when they were appropriate and the kids really surprised us this season.”

The Hubs will have several underclassmen eligible to return to the varsity lineup including sophomores Jaden Cook (16-12), Weldon Nay (13-15), Josey Weber (12-7), Wesley Brown (12-18) and Troy Papke (2-8). Freshmen like Tourdot (21-3), Brock Metzger (6-5), Riley Damask (20-2) and Leo Stoffel (6-10) also scored big wins for Rochelle this year. Junior Matt Eyster (6-15) will also be able to return.

“This senior class made such a huge jump this year,” Vruno said. “They improved more than I could’ve imagined and I have to give them a lot of credit. They had unbelievable years and they proved me wrong in so many ways. They proved to be irreplaceable in our lineup and they were extremely consistent. It will be rough to lose them, but we have a lot of kids coming back who have earned consistent experience in the varsity lineup. We’ll be relying on them to lead us.”