Conference 21A Wrestling

Posted: February 8, 2016
By ROBERT NIEDZWIECKI
The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — After weeks of anticipation, the Handley wrestling team was devastated to lose Tuesday’s dual match with Sherando that decided the Northwestern District championship.

In retrospect though, that 47-24 defeat might have been a good thing. The Judges’ collective desire to atone for that loss might have been just the edge they needed in a Conference 21A tournament that would have gone to someone else if any one of their 13 wrestlers who won matches Saturday had won just one fewer match.

Handley scored 264.5 points to edge Sherando (261.5) and Woodgrove (260.5) at the Conference 21A tournament at James Wood High School.

It’s been only two years since Handley last won a conference tournament, but that was in Conference 23, which didn’t include its Northwestern District rivals Sherando, James Wood (fourth Saturday with 232 points) and Millbrook (fifth, 174.5). The Judges haven’t finished on top of a local postseason competition since they shared the Northwestern District title in 1997.

“This means a lot,” said Handley senior Lio Quezada, who blitzed through the 132-pound weight class by pinning each of his five opponents in the first round. “After not getting what we wanted Tuesday, that really fueled our fire for the three days of practice that we had [Wednesday through Friday].

“We wanted to get this conference title. That’s what we were going for all year. It’s good to get it done.”

Quezada was one of five Handley wrestlers to win their weight class in the six-team duals tournament that was scored more like a bracketed tournament. (Harrisonburg placed sixth with 149.5 points.) Every team wrestled the other over five rounds of duals, and wrestlers received two points for each win, activity points, and placement points.

Others who won their weight class for Handley were Cam Bentley — who won his 100th career match Saturday — at 138 pounds, Harrison Robinson at 152, Dolan Delaney at 170 and Tommy Shea-Roop at 220. Area wresters captured 12 of the 14 weight classes — Mike Duffy (126), Curtis Guthridge (145), John Borst (182) and Ben Avery (285) won for Sherando; Aaron Black (113) and Hunter Bentley (195) won for James Wood; and Kevin Valyear (160) won for Millbrook. Of those 12 champions, Bentley (4-1) was the only one who didn’t go 5-0.

The Judges won for a variety of reasons. Their tournament-high five champs each scored 28 points or more. (The only other team with more than one 28-point scorer was Sherando, with two.) They were one of two teams that had 13 wrestlers who scored more than the four-point minimum.

And they understood that there were no unimportant matches in the tournament, and that they shouldn’t let a previous loss in the tournament affect how they performed the rest of the day.

“Some of the kids were saying earlier this week that they were disappointed that they couldn’t go to finals [for this tournament],” Handley coach David Scott said. “I told them, ‘Well, every match is a final. One loss could hurt you.”

Handley definitely won some critical matches that could have gone the other way based on previous results.

One of those came from Robinson, who defeated Sherando’s James Platts in the opening round 3-0. Platts defeated Robinson, a senior, 5-1 on Tuesday in the dual match, which doubled as Handley’s senior night. Scott felt Robinson’s focus might have been off because that match took place after Sherando had already clinched the team win.

“I really had to make up for that senior night disaster,” said Robinson, who recorded a first-period takedown against Platts. “I knew our team needed that match.”

Outside of winning the actual team title, Handley’s overall performance against Sherando was the highlight of the day for the team. Though the results of the team duals technically didn’t matter — and unlike Tuesday’s dual, neither team changed their lineups to get more favorable matchups — the Judges said Handley would have beaten Sherando 34-33 if the match had featured normal dual scoring. (The two teams tied 33-33, but Handley would have won based on a tiebreaker.)

Quezada said Handley’s coaches and wrestlers urged each other to not be satisfied with the performance against the Warriors, and they went out and beat each of their remaining opponents under normal dual scoring.

One of the biggest individual wins in those four matches was the one recorded by Handley senior Deauntia Green at 195 pounds over Woodgrove’s Gunner Hilling in the fourth round of the day by a 12-6 score.

Hilling opened his day by handing James Wood’s Bentley his only loss with a first-period pin, and his only defeat heading into the fourth round was a result of his forfeit loss to Sherando’s Brett Sloan. Hilling was declared the loser after an illegal move, in which he quickly lifted Sloane and slammed him onto his upper back and head. After being attended to for several minutes, Sloane was eventually taken out of the gym on a stretcher. Sherando coach Pepper Martin said Sloan did not suffer any type of serious injury, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to wrestle in the regional tournament.

“[Green] was kind of looking at [Hilling] all day and thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can compete with him,’” Scott said. “But he goes out there and mentally breaks that kid, which is a big plus for Deauntia. He has come though for us big-time this year. He’s finally figured out how to wrestle a whole six minutes and battle through being tired. I’m so proud of him. He’s showing a lot of mental toughness.”

That win helped Green go 4-1 and take second — he lost out on first because Bentley owned the head-to-head tiebreaker with a 5-3 win over Green.

With Web Bentley taking second at 120 pounds, Handley will have at least seven people wrestling at the 4A West Region tournament, which will be held this coming Friday and Saturday at John Champe High School in Aldie. The top three finishers in each class Saturday qualified for the regional tournament, but a draw must be held to determine which fourth-place finishers from Saturday’s tournament will fill out the 16-person bracket in the 4A West Region, which has five conferences. Conference 21A will send two or three additional wrestlers once the draw is held.

As of now, Sherando will have nine qualifiers, the most qualifiers of any local Conference 21A school. In addition to their four champions, the Warriors also had Platts (second at 152), Mikeal Neff (second at 160), Kendall Helsley (second at 170), Timmy Dieter (third at 113) and Sloane (third at 195) place in their top three.

But the Warriors had four wrestlers who combined for just two wins, and one of those was a forfeit. Sherando went winless at 132 pounds, which likely would not have been the case if Jacob Stevens (30-8 this year) had not suffered an injury that prevented him from competing in the tournament.

“Our lack of depth really hurt us,” Martin said. “To win a tournament like this, particularly in the format for which it was set up for this year, it’s even more important ... that you don’t have weight classes where you get nothing.

“But on the positive side of it, our four best did what they were supposed to do and won conference championships, and then we had some other kids step up who we felt wrestled extremely well.”

Martin was pleased with Platts, Neff and Helsley. Martin noted that Platts avenged some earlier defeats this season on Friday, Neff has improved considerably, and Helsley was probably in the conference’s toughest weight class.

Guthridge’s weight class wasn’t easy either. Guthridge had to rally from a 2-0 deficit to beat Woodgrove’s Garrett Cook 4-2. Millbrook’s Trae Sine won his match with Cook by a greater margin earlier in the day (9-4), but when Guthridge and Sine met in the fourth round in one of the more highly anticipated bouts of the day, it was Guthridge who won 8-4 to improve to 2-0 against Sine this year.

The key moment of the match came when Guthridge recorded a takedown of Sine with eight seconds left in the second period to go up 4-2 during an exchange in which they both descended suddenly toward the mat.

“I had his arm, and I just rode through real quick trying to scramble [and got the takedown],” Guthridge said.

Sine closed to within 5-4 on a takedown with 1:10 left, but after Sine conceded an escape Guthridge wrapped his arms around Sine’s left leg and got on top of him for a takedown with 23 seconds left.

“It feels good to win,” Guthridge said. “Hopefully I can give myself a high seed [for states] at regionals.”

James Wood will send at least eight people to the regional tournament. Joining Black and Bentley will be Zak Singhas (second at 126), Adam Vadell (second at 285), Josh Arce (third at 106), Matt Papastavrou (third at 138), Bailey Lichtenberger (third at 170) and Ryan Funkhouser (third at 182).

No one spent less time on the mat than Black Saturday. He pinned three opponents in a combined time of 1:55, and received forfeit wins over his other two opponents. After being unable to pin Sherando’s Dieter in his previous matches this year (10-0 and 6-0 wins), he did so in 29 seconds Saturday.

A big reason for that is because Black finally feels at peak strength after giving up on the notion of trying to wrestle at 106 pounds four weeks ago. James Wood coach Greg Walker said Black was wrestling at 109 or 110 pounds against wrestlers who were coming down from 120 pounds before, and with Black eating and lifting more he’s no longer at the disadvantage he was previously.

“Last weekend I started to feel like I was at full strength,” said Black, who won the 22-team Manchester Invitational last Saturday. “My strength is making a big difference right now.”

Walker said Singhas had one of the more impressive individual performances Saturday. Singhas came into the tournament with a record of just 15-20, but he went 4-1 (including one forfeit win) and was down just 5-4 to Sherando’s Duffy after taking him down with 54 seconds left, eventually losing 6-4. Singhas had previously been pinned by Duffy.

“We’ve struggled with Zak as far as his work ethic all year long,” Walker said. “After he got that 11-2 win over Handley [in the second round], his confidence went sky-high. We told him if he worked like that in the room, imagine where you’d be right now. Maybe it clicked, and hopefully it did. We’ll see this week in practice.

“As for the team, we’re a better bracketed tournament team, because our good kids are going to score the major points, and it really wasn’t done that way today. It wasn’t a normal bracket. But after the first match against Woodgrove we got better as the day went on. We lost 54-18 to Sherando the first time, and we lost 39-33 this time in our final match of the day.”

In addition to Valyear and Sine, Millbrook is also guaranteed to send Edwin Ramirez (third at 152), Elijah Doyle (third at 220) and Tavon Blowe (third at 285) on to regionals.

A junior, Valyear is the only one of the 12 local weight class champions Saturday who will participate in his first regional tournament next week. Valyear’s toughest match came against Woodgrove’s Joe Candelaria — he trailed 6-4 heading into the third period but outscored him 8-0 in the final two minutes to earn a 12-6 win.

“A win like that makes me feel like I outworked the other person,” Valyear said. “[Opponents] are just usually more tired than me in the third [period].”

Millbrook coach Jeff Holmes said the effort Valyear had Saturday is what they’ve come to expect of him. Valyear never really wrestled until last year, but he’s making up for lost time.

“He’s a competitor,” Holmes said. “Our goal with him is to keep the match close. We know in the third period, he’s got a tank on him, and he’s got an opportunity to win. He wrestles his best in the third period because he wears guys down.

“As for the team, there was some good and some bad. We lost a couple of close ones that were disappointing. We had some opportunities for redemption that we weren’t able to be successful at, but as a whole we wrestled tough and wrestled hard.”

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