Jeremy Hlavac is the head wrestling coach for Schuyler Central High School. He has coached for 9 years and is starting his fifth season as a head coach. Mr. Hlavac coached at West Point Central Catholic when he was in college. His second year of coaching was at Bergan Jr. High in Fremont for 3 years. Coach Hlavac also coached in O’Neil and then came to Schuyler where he is still coaching today.

Coach Hlavac was introduced to wrestling at a very young age. His father ran the Youth Wrestling Club in Bruno. Kindergarten is where it all began. He wrestled for East Butler for all of his years. In high school, he was a four time State Qualifier and a 2 time State Placer. As a Junior he placed 4th place and was a state Champion when he was a senior.

Coach Hlavac was very excited to start the season with 72 wrestlers. He has had to make some changes to the wrestling program, because of how many students are participating. “The only negatives are having the go to two practices a day, and making sure wrestlers are going to their practices. I know that asking students to come to 6:00 am practice is hard. But if you want to get good and wrestle well at tournaments you have to be at practice and you have to be able to wrestle in the morning.” said coach Hlavac.

Schuyler started the season with a win against Crete Cardinals. Saturday, December 1st was the York Dual Tournament. Schuyler finished in second place losing to Omaha Burke. For the day there were 4 undefeated wrestlers: John Gaspar at 113, Kenny Castro at 126, Caden Yrkoski at 160, and Jesus Maganda at 220. Jesus Maganda was also awarded “Wrestler of the Meet”and had the fastest pin in 9 seconds.

With the experience that Coach Hlavac brings to the table and having an abundance of wrestlers to practice with, it makes wrestlers better and it pushes them to work harder. All of these are factors that may make this a great wrestling season.