Led by its seven seniors, the wrestling team took its already-successful program to new heights last season.

Central finished No. 7 in the country at the NCAA Championships in St. Louis, and four wrestlers finished in the national top 10, achieving All-America honors. Senior 197-pounder Wynn Michalak finished second in his weight class.

However, when the season starts in November, the seven will have moved on, and a new group has the responsibility to keep up a run that has seen the Chippewas win 10 consecutive Mid-American Conference regular-season titles and nine out of 10 MAC Tournament titles.

“Our guys do have really high expectations in our program because of the things that we’ve done nationally in the last 10 years,” said coach Tom Borrelli. “We’ve been able to recruit some athletes that expect to win individual national championships. If you do that, that’s going to place you real high in the national tournament.”

And Borrelli’s freshman class is one of the best in school history. Ranked as high as No. 2 in the country by W.I.N. Magazine, it features five wrestlers who boast three high school national championships.

Ben Bennett, a 174-pounder from Rockford, was named the Most Outstanding Wrestler at the national meet.

“They’ve been successful on the high school level, but there is a big adjustment, there’s a big transition they need to make,” Borrelli said. “I think they definitely have the talent to make that transition, but it’s more of a matter of gaining some collegiate experience. Once they’ve got some experience under their belt, by the end of the year they could be really successful.”

Borrelli said the class is joined by nine other walk-ons who each won Michigan high school state championships.

“It’s probably the most accomplished class we’ve had,” he said. “Having that many state champions walk on, that’s probably the first time we’ve had that happen.”

Borrelli said the leadership role will fall on the team’s four seniors – Vince DiDona, Don Dryer, Eric Kruger and Trevor Stewart.

“(The seniors) really were leaders by example,” DiDona said. “They were superior wrestlers. We just need to keep that going. We want to be a top-10 team consistently every year. We need our seniors and older guys to show the freshmen as seniors what it really means to be a Chippewa here.”

The Chippewas also welcome back Mike Miller, who took an Olympic redshirt and trained in Colorado Springs, Colo. Miller took eighth in the 165-pound weight class and gained All-America honors in 2006-07, his freshman season.

This season’s home schedule features a tri-meet with Nebraska and Virginia Tech in January and a dual meet with Old Dominion, a team Borrelli expects to be in the top 20. CMU also hosts Kent State, which poses the biggest threat to CMU’s MAC crown.

“Kent State will probably be the favorite in the conference because of the number of seniors that we’ve lost,” Borrelli said.

Despite the loss of its senior core, DiDona expects the team to continue its success.

“I don’t think we’re going to take a huge step backwards at all,” he said. “The guys that are here are ready to step in and do some damage.”

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