A strong campaign continued for the Cougar wrestling program over the weekend; the varsity boys brought home a blue banner and the varsity girls finished second in the Section.
Head coach Derek Scott said the boys traveled to Rosemont High School for the two-day Divisionals and claimed the Sac-Joaquin Section Boys Wrestling Divisionals D5 banner, winning by a 211-192 score over favorite Sutter.
“We were the underdog to Sutter,” Scott admitted.
Fourteen Cougars were in action at the two-day meet and eight earned medals. Seven qualified to move on to the Masters Meet, Feb. 16 and 17 at Stockton Arena. The top four in each weight division qualified.
Bringing home a medal for fifth place, just missing a chance to move on to Masters, was Preston Sizuela at 132 pounds, going 4-2.
Third place finishers, moving on to the Masters, were Houston Sizuela, going 5-1 at 113 pounds; Christian Cruz, going 5-1 at 126 pounds; and John Konradi, going 7-1 at 175 pounds, battling back from an early loss to make it to the Masters Meet.
Taking a second-place medal was Luca Cerasi at 120 pounds, going 4-1 over the two days of competition.
“We had three champions,” Scott said of the individual Section title winners for Escalon.
They were Matthew Rangel, 5-0 at 144 pounds; Talan Reider, 5-0 at 150 pounds; and Frank Rodriguze, 5-0 at heavyweight.
“Matt was dominant all weekend, Talan got all his wins by fall, it was something we knew he could do, he just hadn’t done it yet,” Scott said of the top performers. “Frank had his best tournament so far.”
The varsity boys recently brought home the Team Duals banner and have now added the Divisionals title and plenty of hardware to the collection.
For the girls, they went to Central Valley in Ceres for their Section tournament and they finished second overall in Division 5.
The top eight qualify to the Masters and Escalon will take five to that event. They had eight girls compete at the Section meet, with six bringing home medals.
At 115 pounds, Miroslava Torres was ninth and earned a medal but her season is complete. Moving on with an eighth-place finish was Dani Roybal, who went 4-3 at 125 pounds. Seventh place finishers were Sophia Duran, 5-2 at 120 and Violette Kent, 4-2 at 130 pounds. In sixth place was Helena Arroyo, 4-3 at 155 pounds and Escalon’s top finisher was Isabella Alcala, going 4-2 at 110 pounds for a fourth-place overall finish.
Stockton Arena is the host site for the Masters Meet, which begins with action for both boys and girls at 9 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 16 and Saturday, Feb. 17.
