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In area high school wrestling Wawasee has been one of the toughest teams to beat the past few years.
The Warriors have won the Northern Lakes Conference championship the past two years. Two years ago Wawasee sent its entire team to the state championship, and individually, Darrell Carr was a state runner-up.
Last year two Carr brothers made it to state. Kevin, a junior, was state runner-up, and Jason won the state championship as a senior.
No area coach may be more aware of this than Warsaw's Tony Boley.
"Since I've gotten here Wawasee and Goshen have been the teams to beat," said Boley. "Year in and year out the NLC is tough."
In the two years that Boley has been at the helm of the Tigers since moving from Elwood, Warsaw has finished third in the conference twice, and compiled a 29-10 record.
Boley has been linked to Warsaw's wrestling program much longer than the past two years. He graduated from WCHS in 1975, and he was a member of the football, wrestling and track teams.
The interesting angle in this story is not that Boley has returned to his alma mater. That's old news.
What is unknown to many area wrestling fans, that even with competition like Wawasee and Goshen, and the competitive invitationals he takes his teams to, is Boley's level of success.
In 17 years as a head coach Boley has compiled an astounding 223-91-2 record. At Elwood Community High School he won eight consecutive Central Indiana Conference championships as well as five Madison County championships. Boley has guided his teams to six sectional titles, and in seven years of his coaching tenure has been represented at the state wrestling meet. Boley's record speaks for itself, but what makes him different is the fact that he was never a member of the varsity team in high school. In fact he was the captain of the junior varsity team his senior year.
"I wrestled to make myself better at football and track," said Boley. "I never wrestled at the varsity level, my sons have accomplished more than I ever did. Kids need to be involved as much as they can, they need to be supervised.
"I took pride in being part of the team. I might have been on the JV team, but I was part of the team and a successful program. Nowadays kids don't go out because they're afraid of not being the star."
Though Boley himself might not have been the star, he has produced some. Namely his son Robbie, who with a 35-4 campaign set a school record 25 pins last year, will be a key loss for the Tigers this year.
"We lost three seniors (Boley, Greg Patrick, Aaron Banks) who were very valuable leaders on the mat, in the classroom, and were like assistant coaches," said Boley. "Robbie had a great career. I could always count on him to pick up a win. We came up here and the competition was a lot tougher, and his senior year he was my first individual conference and regional champion here."
Those are just the losses due to graduation. Boley says he has also lost three important cogs that because of thing or another won't be finishing their careers with the Tigers.
"I lost a sectional champ who moved, I lost a sectional champ who wouldn't come out, and I lost a state qualifier who is ineligible," said Boley. "Those three had the potential of winning 25 or 30 matches each."
Despite the losses Boley still expects to have a memorable season. Wawasee returns only of the Carr brothers, Kevin, and with the experiece Boley still has returning this might just be the year the Tigers can compete at the next level where Wawasee has been the last few years.
"Some people thought about ranking us in the top 20," said Boley. "If we had those three in our lineup we could be really tough. I'm kind of starting over, but that's alright."
Starting over?
Boley will have nearly 10 seniors to work with, half of whom are four year varsity wrestlers, including Adam Harter, who in Boley's first year at WCHS was the only Tiger grappler to advance past the regional round.
The last time any of Boley's teams won less than 13 matches was 11 years ago, and in 17 years he has only four losing seasons.
He'll get his first shot at victory number 234 Saturday when Warsaw hosts a six team invitational involving area schools Valley, Whitko, and Triton.
