‘We are offering wrestling’: American Heritage-Delray Beach wrestling program continuing

BY BRANT PARSONS — American Heritage-Delray Beach’s storied wrestling program will be competing in the 2022-23 season. AHDB Athletic Director Kristina Shahin confirmed to Kabra Wrestling on Friday.

“We are going to have a program, we are offering wrestling,” Shahin said.

It was reported this week that AHDB would be dropping wrestling for the upcoming season. The issue at hand for AHDB was that the team could no longer use the off-campus location that they had been using because of zoning issues.

Shahin said that the school looked for other locations that would fit the zoning criteria and could not find one, so the team will be practicing on-campus this season.

“It’s going to be a unique schedule for practices as they will be practicing on campus,” Shahin said. “The last thing we wanted to see happen was this great program end.”

Shahin, who took over her ‘dream role’ of athletic director in October 2021, said she’s proud of the wrestling program and wanted it to be available for whatever number of students wanted to compete. She also knows the recent tradition the program has and wanted to honor the upperclassmen who were returning this year.

“We called the parents yesterday to tell them that it’s coming back,” Shahin said.

The Stallions have had six individual state champions with senior Mikey Tal Shahar and freshman Frankie Florio winning titles back in May. The state title was the second for Mikey and was the third in the family with Frankie winning a state championship in 2019.

Ryan Thomas was the first individual champion for American Heritage, winning titles in 2015 and 2016.

The team has also performed well since 2015, placing in the top 10 in Class 1A at the state tournament. The Stallions placed second in 2019 for the highest team finish.

American Heritage has also won 7 district titles since 2012.

Head coach J.P. Reese stepped down from his role after the past season and the head coach job was given to Shawn Sheldon.

Shahin said that they have reached out to Sheldon with the new plan for keeping wrestling and are hoping he wants to continue to coach the team.