KELSEYVILLE — The Kelseyville High School wrestling team is featured in the April 2012 edition of La Voz, a bilingual newspaper serving Northern California.
The Knights, a prominent contender in the Coastal Mountain Conference race this past season and the third-place finishers at the NCS Team Dual Championships, feature many Latino wrestlers in their ranks, including Cristian Ponce, Wences Rojas, Adryan Segura and Alfonso Reyes.
Head coach Rob Brown actively recruits Latino athletes, many of whom star for the Knights during the fall soccer season.
“Take Wences Rojas,” Brown said in the La Voz feature story. “Besides being an excellent wrestler, he is exceptional at soccer and an incredibly talented artist. Many people also don”t realize there are great wrestling scholarships.”
According to the La Voz story, “A lot of people aren”t aware that wrestling doesn”t have to cancel out soccer,” sports that are contested at different times of the school year – soccer in the fall and wrestling in the winter.
Brown discusses one of the challenges of working with Latino wrestlers, some of whom are still learning the English language when they reach the high school ranks.
“Sometimes, I”ll have a player that has only been here for a little while. Their English and my Spanish can”t keep up during the intensity of a match so I have a student translator help me out,” according to the La Voz article.
