Seniors help James Wood rout Millbrook in wrestling

By JIM LAISE | Special to The Winchester Star

Jan 25, 2018

WINCHESTER — Fittingly, on Senior Night, seniors played a big role in the James Wood wrestling team’s 56-13 dual victory over cross-county and Class 4 Northwestern District rival Millbrook in the Colonels’ final home meet of the season.

Both the Colonels and the Pioneers will compete against each other again at the Feb. 3 Northwestern District Tournament at Liberty High School. The district’s regular season results will help with seeding for the event.

For this night at Donald H. Shirley Gymnasium, seniors Jacob Lease, Corey Lemons, Aaron Curd and Jack Youngblood and their families were formally introduced to the wrestling crowd.

Each of the three competing seniors finished with victories, and Lemons and Curd finished with falls. Youngblood did not wrestle Wednesday because he recently injured an elbow and is being evaluated for further wrestling.

“I thought overall that’s about as well as we’ve wrestled all year,” James Wood coach Cory Crenshaw said. “These guys came out and focused.

“It was there tonight. Especially our lighter-weight wrestlers. That’s about as well as (sophomore 113-pounder Vince Caruso) has wrestled all year.”

Sophomore Josiah Geaslen took out Millbrook’s Cody Glover 3-0 to give the Colonels the same 3-point lead as a team after just one match—at 106.

Then came Caruso.

The sophomore is 17-13 this season, but he was going against a previous state qualifier in Millbrook sophomore Jonathan Ochoa (30-10). Caruso won 4-2 which, in turn, put the Colonels up 6-0 as a team.

Millbrook’s first of two victories on the night was equally impressive: sophomore Jose Cruz-Ramirez (22-16) dropped James Wood’s junior Josh Arce (27-8) by the score of 10-7. The team score stood 6-3 in favor of Wood.

“Mainly I used my conditioning. I thought I was very well conditioned,” Cruz-Ramirez said.

After that it was a mostly Blue-and-Gold night.

Lease, at 126, snared Millbrook’s Randolph Ortega 12-4 for a 10-3 team score.

At 132, Lemons (22-11, 17 pins at 132) went right after Millbrook sophomore Stephen Topham.

The Gore resident (106-64 lifetime) drew a fall 56 seconds into the first period.

After giving a fist-jerk, Lemons went over to fellow senior Youngblood, and gave him a big hug.

“I’m really excited about what we’ve done and what’s to come, Lemons said. “We’re focused, we’re peaking at the right time of the season and the team is pulling together. It’s been a long year, but we’ve got something to show for it. Now we just want to carry this momentum on.”

After Millbrook’s Lukas Guerrero major-decisioned James Wood’s Joey Vitola 11-1 at 138, the Colonels’ Sam Adkins topped Millbrook’s Daniel VanAmburg 13-5 at 145 to make the team score 20-7 in favor of the hosts.

Then the falls — kicked off by a senior — started to commence.

Curd (152) took a fall over Millbrook’s Leonard Maddox with 16.1 seconds left in the first period.

A third-generation James Wood student, Curd also runs cross country. The fall conditioning combined with a different wrestling approach is making a big difference this year.

“My big thing this year is to come out aggressively right from the start,” Curd said. “I run cross-country and, early in my career, I depended on conditioning to carry me. But this year, I’ve learned to get out early and then use my conditioning late.”

Then, junior varsity member Walker Powell, a junior replacing Youngblood at 160, earned a fall over Millbrook’s Adolfo Perez with 47.6 seconds left in the first period. That made it 32-7 James Wood.

That was followed by Colonel 170-pounder Paul Ebersole’s fall over Daniel Bautista at 1:56 of the first period to make it 38-7.

The next fall was by James Wood junior 182-pounder Jared King, who knocked off Pioneer Jack Winans with 34.7 seconds left in the third period to make it 44-7.

Luke Roy (195) was up next. He took down Millbrook’s John Laws with one minute to go in the first frame.

Kobey Brooker had a similar result. His pin at 1:20 of the first knocked off Millwood’s Shoaib Zamani. With the 220-pound bout done, the Colonels were ahead 56-7.

Two-hundred-and-eighty-five-pound 2017 state runnerup, Tavon Blowe put a stop to the Colonels’ run of falls with one of his own.

The senior (41-1) picked up his 27th pin off the season with a fall over Brayden Patterson-Campbell at 1:26 of the second period to conclude the final score of 56-13.

“It’s been that kind of a year for us,” Millbrook coach Jeff Holmes said. “We did OK in the lower weights, but their bigger guys kind of took over.”