Wrestling team takes sixth at Mid-Cals
With just three weeks to go before the Central Coast Section
wrestling championships get under way, the goal remains the same at
San Benito High: To send someone from all 14 weight classes to the
section meet.
Wrestling team takes sixth at Mid-Cals
With just three weeks to go before the Central Coast Section wrestling championships get under way, the goal remains the same at San Benito High: To send someone from all 14 weight classes to the section meet.
“That’s the goal, as is winning it all,” said San Benito High Wresting Coach Matt Olejnik, whose Balers are currently ranked third in the section. “Catching Gilroy (High) is going to be tough. On a scale of 1 to 10, the odds of beating them on any given day is about a 3. With that said, we are expecting to finish in the top 3 in the section, and would like to edge out Los Gatos for second.”
Last weekend at the Mid-Cals Wrestling Championships at Gilroy High, the Balers were able to see how they stacked up against some of the top teams in the section a month before CCS as well as see how they fared against schools from all over Northern California.
Riding the wave of three straight tournament wins, the Balers had high expectations as they entered the Gilroy High gymnasium. And when the dust settled two days later, Olejnik’s team proved that it was better than 49 of the 55 teams that were in the competition.
Gilroy High, which will be going for its fifth section title in a row this month, proved once again that it is head and shoulders above the competition as it won Mid-Cals by a 225.5-196.5 margin over second-place Elk Gove High School.
The Balers walked off the mats with their heads held high after finishing sixth overall and racking up 113.5 points.
“I was encouraged by our performance,” Olejnik said. “We did about as well as we could have done. Every school that is ranked in the Top 10 at CCS was there except Los Gatos so it was a good warm up for things to come.”
In addition to Gilroy and San Benito the only other team from the Tri County Athletic League to crack the Top 10 was Palma, which finished 10th.
The high points for the Balers team at Mid Cals included two second-place finishers as well as a fifth-place finish in the 154-pound division – one of the toughest divisions in the section.
The first Baler to take second last Saturday was freshman Junior Davilla, who beat Ray Mendoza, the No. 2 ranked wrestler in the section, to make it to the finals. From there Davilla went up against Elk Grove’s Sophan Mey in a nip-and-tuck showdown in the finals before suffering a gut-wrenching 17-15 loss.
“He wrestled real well and then he got put to his back with 30 seconds left,” said Olejnik after watching his wrestler battle it out in front of the packed gym. “I’m real proud of him. That kid had a lot of experience.”
The other top finisher for the Balers was junior Fernando Lucatero. He took second in the 160-pound division. But after advancing to the finals in impressive fashion, via his win over league foe Justin Orozco of Salinas, Lucatero suffered a blowout 13-1 loss in the finals to Buhach Colony’s George Gutierrez.
“It really wasn’t his best performance,” Olejnik said. “He was a little off in the finals. The kid that he fought was big and strong and Fernando got behind early and was never able to recover from it.”
After trailing 4-1 early, Lucatero was forced to change his game plan and open up more and take a number of chances, which, according to Olejnik, led to untimely mistakes and an insurmountable point deficit, which made a come-from-behind victory next to impossible.
The last Baler to crack the Top 5 was sophomore Josh Ramirez, who managed to pull of a fifth-place finish in the hotly contested division.
“He wrestled really consistent for us. He’s having a really good sophomore year,” Olejnik said. “He’s right where he wants to be. His class in our league is so strong that he could take fourth in league and wind up placing in the sections. Overall, I’m pleased and I think we did about how we expected heading into the tournament.”
