They are experienced, they are deep, and they are ready to head into the upcoming season.

The Golden Eagles of Aberdeen Central are ready for another solid boys’ wrestling campaign. The squad, which finished third at the State AA team tournament and third at the state dual tourney, returns eight state place winners and 11 overall state qualifiers.

“That’s a good thing. That’s what we want,” said Central coach Donnie Bowden of the number of returning wrestlers. “We’ve been building up to this point where we can have those kind of numbers, where we could send all 14 and then we could return a whole boat load like we did this year. We’ve got a lot of experience coming back.”

The Golden Eagles will be led by returning state place winners: seniors Tate Huff, Mason Schrempp, Elias Biegler, and Ryker Meister, juniors Esten Foss and Ridley Waldo, sophomore Cole Dunlavy, and freshman Porter Lozenski.

Bowden said having such a veteran squad in the room does not change the goals, but it does enhance the starting point to begin the season.

“I think the expectations always stay the same, the goals stay the same,” Bowden said, “but we get to start off in a better place.”

Central kicks off the season at a dual tournament in Watertown on Saturday.

Bowden said the competition in the wrestling room has been intense as the squad prepares for the season opening matches.

“I think we’re in a really good place,” Bowden said. “We went through our simulation matches and our wrestle-offs and we had some really good competition within those, and I think the guys are ready to see what happens on Saturday.”

While Central figures to be among the elite squads in the state again this winter, Bowden said he doesn’t talk about things like who is favored to win the state championship.

“We’re not really focused on who’s the favorite and who’s not,” he said, “we’re just going to put our guys out on the mat, get them down to the best weight that we can get them too, and see what happens.”

One thing is for sure, there won’t be many more experienced squads in the state this year.

“As a whole it’s pretty good,” Bowden said. “It’s an experienced crew. We have a big senior class this year.”

One of the keys this season will be finding the right spots for all of the wrestlers to maximize the talent and potential on the squad.

“The biggest thing now is just getting guys down to the weights where we think we need them, so we can spread that wealth out among 14 weights,” Bowden said. “We usually have a lot of guys piled up at weights, so (we’re) trying to spread them out a little bit, so we can get as many guys in the lineup as we can.”

After spending the past few weeks facing each other, the Golden Eagles are ready to see a different opponent.

“We’re excited, especially when you’re three weeks into practice and you haven’t got to touch anyone else.” Bowden said. “So we’re excited for Saturday.”