STEPHENS CITY — There were plenty of exuberant smiles between Jason Foster and Anthony Lucchiani on Tuesday night. With how they performed, it wasn’t hard to imagine why.
The pair combined for five pins and a forfeit victory to propel Sherando to a 3-0 finish against James Wood, Kettle Run and Liberty in a quad at home. The Warriors defeated the Colonels 32-31, Kettle Run 53-21 and Liberty 54-21 to move to 14-1 in duals. James Wood finished 2-1, defeating Liberty 53-19 and Kettle Run 66-9.
Foster, a senior, pinned all three of his opponents in the 190-pound weight class. That included a nine-second pin over Kettle Run’s Rigo Rebollo-Gallardo in which Foster pinned him off a lateral drop. Foster’s other two pins were also in the first period. He pinned Liberty’s Caydon Shadle in 31 seconds and Wood’s Isaac Bond in 46 seconds.
Foster, who only had two months of jiu-jitsu experience sophomore year, is new to wrestling as a senior this winter. While he may be new to the sport, he’s a familiar face with the team.
“I grew up with all my teammates,” Foster said. “[Lucchiani] is just a great wrestler. He’s a [Division I] wrestler, and I just take a lot from him. He pushes me to be the best wrestler I could be. It’s good having people who can wrestle, and people who know how to wrestle in your corner. I’m just loving the sport.”
Foster’s pin against Kettle Run’s Rebollo-Gallardo got the attention of Lucchiani, who was asked by a teammate on the bench how Foster pinned Rebollo-Gallardo so quickly. Lucchiani responded with an ear-to-ear smile and said, “He just threw him, I don’t know.”
“He’s an amazing athlete,” Lucchiani said. “Like a student of the game. He wants to learn. He’s everything that a coach wants, I guess you could say. I mean, he works hard every day, comes in and does his stuff and doesn’t complain. He rarely shows his weak side. He’s always strong, always mentally stable, and he does great. I mean, he’s taken to the sport really well, and he just has the things of wrestling that you can’t teach.”
Lucchiani said he worked out with Foster a few times this summer and was impressed with how he had a knack for the sport. After knowing Foster since middle school, the three-time state champion was glad to see the former Sherando football player — Foster played running back for the Warriors in 2022 — compete on the mats.
“When he told me he wanted to wrestle, I was so happy,” Lucchiani said. “Because he needed to. I’ve been asking him to do it since freshman year.”
With Tuesday’s performance, Foster is 17-6 in his first season. Despite his lack of true wrestling experience, Foster has high expectations for himself.
“I see myself competing with the best of the best at states,” Foster said. “I feel like I’m up there with the best, and if I get things going, I can make things click to make things happen.”
Sherando coach Brian Kibler also sees Foster going far.
“Everything that he’s doing is everything that I thought he could be,” Kibler said. “There’s times when I think it could be a little bit more orthodox than what he is. But, I mean, he’s such an athlete, you never want to take something like that out of his pocket, especially as a senior [and] first year coming out. Just let an athlete be an athlete sometimes, and that’s what he is.”
Lucchiani was just as effective. Wrestling up a weight class for the first-round matchup against the Colonels, Lucchiani pinned Wood’s Austin Noble in the second period (0:44). Lucchiani also wrestled at 144 against Kettle Run, pinning Jonathan Nicolai 58 seconds into the match. He finished his day off with a forfeit win over Liberty at 138 pounds.
Lucchiani didn’t wrestle in the Trojan Wars due to injury in late December, but his fourth-place performance in the Beast of the East the week prior was one he was proud of after finishing fifth last season.
“I wrestled amazing,” Lucchiani said of his Beast of the East performance. “It’s probably one of the best times I’ve ever wrestled, to be honest, except for my semifinal match, obviously. But, I mean, my shots were hitting. I was staying in a good head space. I didn’t really get tired. I felt amazing.”
Sherando defeated James Wood by tiebreaker with “Criteria E,” which declares the team with the most pins in the dual the winner.
Trailing 31-27 entering the final match against the Colonels, Sherando received four points from Damien Costello (120), who defeated Wood’s Isaiah Hodel by major decision (21-10) to tie the dual at 31 apiece. Sherando was then declared the winner because they had three pins in the dual compared to Wood’s two — Jesse Woodson and Sean Hodel recored the pins for the Colonels.
While his team had three pins in the dual against Wood, Kibler thought his team could’ve earned more points in certain situations but acknowledged the Colonels wrestled well.
“There were opportunities for us to be able to win that prior, and also for them, too,” Kibler said. “Kudos to them. They wrestled a good dual. It was a tight one. It was exciting, and those things don’t always happen. If you’re watching and the scores come across the score desk, those things don’t always happen, so it’s pretty exciting when it does happen.”
Along with Foster and Lucchiani, Costello, Kaden Hurst (285 pounds) and Kaden Frock (106) all went 3-0. Blake Kelly (113), Lucas Bauer (126), Ben Taylor (175) and Judson Dean (215) went 2-1.
James Wood coach Cory Crenshaw thought his team performed well against Sherando.
“There’s nothing you can really fault either team for,” Crenshaw said. “Everybody wrestled hard, wrestled tough, and that’s going to go to show here in a couple weeks when we go to regionals and how we’re going to hopefully stack up with each other. I still think Sherando is going to be the team to beat, but for us as a team, maybe that puts us in a position that we can think about second place or something.”
Wood had five wrestlers go 3-0: Hayden Black (106 pounds; two pins, one technical fall); Seth Merryman (126; one pin); Hayden Franks (138; one major decision); Sean Hodel (150; two pins, one technical fall); and Jesse Woodson (157; three pins). Isaiah Hodel (120), Austin Noble (144), Aiden Henry (165) and Orion Cox (215) all finished 2-1.
Wood had its first practice on Monday in nearly 10 days. Crenshaw’s message to the team heading into Tuesday’s quad was to stay composed and gut it out. With a 34-point win over Liberty and a 57-point win over Kettle Run, the Colonels heard that message.
“They really wrestled hard for themselves, for the team and gave ourselves great opportunities throughout the day,” Crenshaw said. “When we just cleaned out of here, that’s what I told the team. I was like, ‘You guys put in a great effort today. Tomorrow is a new day.’ We got a lot more matches to go in the next two weeks, so we’re going to have to keep our heads down and keep moving forward.”
Sherando will be back in action on Saturday in a quad at Strasburg. James Wood will compete at the Handley Invitational on Saturday.
— Contact Justin Robertson at jrobertson@winchesterstar.com
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