By ALEX SPONSELLER The Warwick Vets Middle School wrestling team put on a show at the recent state championships, wrapping up a second-place finish as a unit and seeing two grapplers take home individual titles.

Brent Angelini would take home his second state championship as a middle schooler when he won the bracket at 75 pounds. Andrew Stevens would then take first place in the 180-pound division for the Hurricanes.

“We figured Brent would win, he won as a sixth grader for Winman and has been pretty impressive. Then we had a few kids that were kind of, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ Andrew was a pleasant surprise. He’s someone that puts the time in, he’s a hard-working kid. His heart brought him a championship, there was no one that would take that away from him,” said Vets coach Kurt Keaney of the team’s first-place finishers.

Also having strong showings were David Ferrante, who took second place at 88 pounds, and Mikhail Hulkow, who finished runner up at 94 pounds. Sixth grader Colton Wirtz also made a splash by taking home a third-place finish.

Keaney was proud of his team’s season, especially after missing last winter due to the pandemic.

“Without having a season last year, filling our squad and those 17 weight classes was a challenge. We were lucky to have 25 guys on the team and were able to fill 15 of those weight classes with varsity wrestlers. It was a big relief,” Keaney said. “We lost so many wrestlers, didn’t have last year, we were afraid that it might be a total rebuild. Once we had a few dual meets and saw the improvement of some of our wrestlers, we began to feel that we could make a run at states which we did.”

Keaney also hopes that the big season will help the numbers continue to rebound after the missed season and build some momentum moving forward.

“When we got back to the school with the trophy, we had a bunch of kids saying, ‘I should have wrestled, I’ll be there next year.’ There’s a buzz there now. Unfortunately, we are losing a few eighth graders, but we have a nice little nucleus, a nice little core to start with,” said Keaney, who will miss his strong eighth grade class. “It was great to see them come back and to just be focused and have that determination.”