‘It’s past my bedtime’

Region II wrestling tourney finishes after 2 a.m. Monday

By Robert Niedzwiecki
The Winchester Star

“It’s past my bedtime,” the Sherando High School senior said. “I’ve got a massive headache right now.”

Bakos spoke those words just before 1:30 a.m. Monday morning at James Wood High School, near the end of an exhausting stretch in which he woke up at 5:30 a.m. Sunday and arrived at 8 a.m. for a tournament that didn’t end until 2:05 a.m. the next day.

Fauquier won the regional team title with 223.5 points, 43.5 more than Bakos’ Sherando squad, which finished second and had eight state qualifiers. Millbrook (seven state qualifiers) was third with 161.5 points, followed by James Wood (six qualifiers) in fourth with 132.5.

Handley, which had one state qualifier, was 15th in the 24-team field with with 42.5 points. The top four wrestlers in each weight class advanced to the Group AA state tournament, which will be contested Friday and Saturday in Salem. Some wrestlers — like regional champions Tanner Sine of Millbrook (103 pounds) and Gage Swartz of James Wood (119) — insisted that the 16 hours of competition didn’t bother them that much, saying that it was just a little longer than they’re used to.

But Bakos, who’s fond of using the phrase, “I’m not going to lie,” certainly didn’t when describing the pain he went through.

“This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in wrestling,” said Bakos, who improved to 50-2 after defeating Fauquier’s Jake Fahlfeder by fall in 3 minutes and 44 seconds in the final. “God knows how long we’ve been in here. I had to get up at 5:30 to get ready, and I had to try and stay warm throughout the day. You can’t let your body go hot and cold.

“It’s a lot harder than it seems. Just because you cut weight and you come in here and eat doesn’t mean you gain everything you’ve lost.”

Bakos took an interesting approach against Fahlfeder in the final. He went in treating it like his first match of the day, which was technically true since it occurred during the wee hours of Monday morning.

“If you wrestle like that, you wrestle a lot harder,” Bakos said.

Still, it took him a while to get going. He led just 2-0 after one period and was up 5-0 when he recorded the pin that gave him the second regional title of his career, his first in two years.

“I went out and felt fine, but going into the end of the first and the beginning of the second, my headache started coming back,” Bakos said. “I felt achy and tired. It was a lot harder than it seemed out there. If you’re like, ‘Man, it’s 1 o’clock in the morning, [success is] not happening. Especially here. Regional final, it’s a big match.”

James Wood coach Greg Walker’s work was far from over by the time Bakos’ match was — a compelling match involving his heavyweight, Austin Woodall, and post-match cleanup was still forthcoming — but he was finally hitting the homestretch.

In an ideal world, Walker would have been kicking his feet up at home with his family on Sunday. But the tournament, originally scheduled for Friday and Saturday, was first pushed back to Saturday and Sunday because of last week’s snowstorms, then was condensed into one day because schools outside the Northwestern District were concerned that their commute would still be difficult Saturday.

Walker didn’t get Saturday off, though. While his team was practicing, he shoveled snow off the roof of Casey Gymnasium, which had been leaking all week and was still leaking at times Sunday.

“I got two minutes with my team [Saturday],” said Walker, speaking at the foot of the gymnasium’s stairwell at 2:30 Monday morning after having arrived at 4:30 Sunday morning. “Adversity is going to happen. You’ve got to overcome it and make the best of it.”

Swartz has clearly done that, after breaking his left elbow during the 112-pound semifinals of last year’s Region II tournament, which ended his chance at a potential trip to the state final.

Walker said Swartz (41-5) has been cautious at times this year, but he loved how he wrestled Sunday in the championship against Chuong Lee of Freedom, building a 13-0 lead before getting a pin in 2:56.

“That’s how he wrestles when he wants to wrestle,” Walker said. “When he opened it up, he destroyed the kid.”

It was Swartz’s first regional title since he was a sophomore, but he won’t be satisfied unless he lays waste to the Group AA field later this week.

“It’s good to get it, but coming into the season this wasn’t my goal,” Swartz said. “A state title is my goal, and this is just a stepping stone toward that.”

Swartz’s younger brother Taylor came close to winning the first regional title of the night at 103 pounds, battling Sine to a scoreless draw through the first two periods. But Sine (46-6), a senior who won the previous two matches against Taylor Swartz, scored a reversal 51 seconds into the final period and got the pin with 19 seconds left.

Sine said he underestimated Swartz coming in, because of his prior success against him. But in the final period, Sine — a first-year-starter — reminded himself what a rare opportunity the match was for him.

“I was thinking, ‘This is my senior year. This is my last chance to be a regional champ,’ so I just gave everything I had left,’” Sine said.

Gage Swartz, Sine and Bakos each finished off their matches early, but every second was needed in the final two matches of the night.

In a rematch of the Northwestern District final, Sherando senior Baxter Newman (32-4) earned his first regional title and the area’s fourth of the competition when Skyline’s Zach Wooddell was called for stalling with one second left. The point gave Newman a 2-1 win.

That late victory couldn’t compare to the drama that played out in the tournament’s final match, which fittingly went to a fourth overtime session. With Monticello’s undefeated Tim Rollins up 7-2 in the third period, it looked like he would have no problem avenging his loss to Woodall in last year’s heavyweight final, which the James Wood senior won by fall.

With the score 7-5 and the clock running down, Walker raised his hand to indicate stalling should be called. A two-point penalty was issued — but only after the final buzzer, and only after Rollins had dropped to his knees in celebration and Woodall had taken off his headgear.

With fans hollering constantly, they went through a scoreless opening overtime and exchanged escape points in the next two. (The most noise came when Rollins took a swig of water before the final overtime, which isn’t allowed unless there’s a stoppage for injury or bleeding, but the head official didn’t see it.) Finally, Rollins put an end to an exhausting match and an exhausting day by recording an escape nine seconds into the final period.

It was a mixed bag of emotions for area coaches afterward.

Sherando coach Pepper Martin was disappointed his Warriors didn’t capture the regional title, and Millbrook coach John Borst was hoping for more than one individual champion, but each was satisfied with qualifying more wrestlers for the state tournament than last year.

Walker said he was pleased because he thought his team might only take sixth, and he thought his six state qualifiers might have been the most they’ve had in a long time.

Mostly, everyone was just glad it was over.

“Eighteen hours we’ve been here,” Martin said. “We had to do what we had to do to get the tournament in.”

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