Rutgers Wrestling: Shawver and Alvarez earn spots on Puerto Rican U23 National Team.

With November suddenly right around the corner and with it the start of the 2022-23 college wrestling season, two Scarlet Knights will have a significant preseason test next month in Pontevedra, Spain as Dylan Shawver (57kg) and Sammy Alvarez (65kg) each earned a spot on the Team Puerto Rico 23 and under (U23) National team.

The two standout lightweights follow in the footsteps of former Scarlet Knight All-American Sebastian Rivera, who is set to compete at the Senior World Championships for Team Puerto Rico next week (Sept. 10 - 18) in Belgrade, Serbia.

Rivera picked up the three seed in his 65kg bracket and we’ll have a tournament preview of what a potential run from the former All-American could look like next week.

For Shawver, the U23 tournament figures to be a an excellent “warm up” for what could be a season-long roster battle between the 2022 NCAA tournament qualifier and much heralded recruit Dean Peterson, a former two-time NJSIAA champion and three-time finalist who took a redshirt last season.

Peterson was ranked No. 1 at 126lbs coming out of high school by multiple publications and originally signed with Princeton before making his way to the banks.

After struggling with weight issues the past two seasons down at 133lbs, Sammy Alvarez will be wrestling at approximately 143.3lbs for the U23 tournament.

This will be close to his anticipated competition weight for the Scarlet Knights this season (141lbs) which hopefully will alleviate much of his weight related stress and allow Alvarez to just do what he does extremely well...wrestle.

The U23 World Championships take place October 17th-23rd from Pontevedra, Spain and can be streamed on FloWrestling.