The victory assured the Golden Eagles a Sierra Foothill League championship with a last-match win over the Bulldogs for the second straight year.
“Every year it comes down to the last match and unfortunately, the last two years they were the favorite in those last matches,” Folsom coach Mike Collier said. “(Matt) Loftis fought all he could, but they were the heavy favorite in that last match.”
In a match as close as this one, both coaches plan before the match what wrestler they’d like to put in what weight class to wrestle a certain opponent, but it rarely works out how each coach wants it.
“We knew it would be tight,” Del Oro coach Clint Madden said. “You always come into the match with a plan, but there’s always a couple of matches you lose that you think you’re going to win, and then it just comes down to winning some of the ones that you think you’re going to lose.”
In this particular dual meet, there were five big matches the coaches pointed out that could have gone either way. Madden and Collier pointed to the match at 192 pounds between Del Oro's Breyden Rush and Folsom's Alec Coffin as one of the game changers. Rush won the match 3-1.
“Breyden lost to him (Coffin) the last time he wrestled him so that was a great comeback and a big win,” Madden said.
Madden also pointed to the 170-pound match: Evan Hilmen vs. Angelo Sardo.
“Evan pulled that one out,” Madden said. “He beat that kid before but it was still a big win in a match that could have gone either way.”
Collier had a few other matches he pointed to as well.
“There were four close ones that could have gone either way,” Collier said. “At 57s (Preston McAninch vs. Wyatt Alexander), we’ve beaten him twice and he got us this time. At 90s (Rush and Coffin), we have beaten him before. At 06s (Kingston Cruzat vs. Nate Mitchell), we were right there and at 26 (Orion Hill vs. Christian Perez), we had lost to him before but it was a one-point match. If one or two of those go the other way, that’s the difference in the dual.”
So in those key matches, Alexander defeated McAninch 8-7, Hilmen held a slim 2-0 lead over Sardo before catching and pinning him, Rush defeated Coffin 3-1, Mitchell beat Cruzat 4-2, and Perez slipped by Hill 5-4.
Also winning matches for Del Oro were Patrick Bailey (pin at 217) and Siraj Sidhu (pin at 122). Winning matches for the Bulldogs were Ryland Smith (injured default, 152), Xander Webster (pin at 167), Dominic Matthews (pin at 275), Mas Hatano (pin at 115), Kai Yi-Berg (8-6 at 134) and Nicholas Spotswood (9-1 at 140).
“Strategy wise, it was interesting the way it matched up,” Collier said. “You always second-guess yourself; could I have done it differently? I’m proud of the eff... Click here to read full article
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