Big risks paid off in spots for the South Whidbey wrestling team Thursday night.
It also cost the Falcons a chance at defeating Sultan, considered by South Whidbey’s coaches as one of the top teams in the Cascade Conference.
For a moment, it looked like South Whidbey wrestling had a shot to take down the formidable Sultan Turks. Through the middle weights, the Falcons scraped their way into the contest from a 24-6 deficit. A couple of mistakes later, the moment passed and Sultan had ensured its victory with a 47-28 win.
“I’m not happy,” said Falcon head coach Jim Thompson. “I didn’t think we could beat them, but I thought we could wrestle with them.”
“I was disappointed with some of the matches because I don’t think we wrestled as well as we could have,” he added later.
The team score, awarded based on individual matches’ finish — six points for a pin, five points for a technical fall, four points for a fall — drew within striking distance for South Whidbey by the 170-pound bout.
Some luck factored in the Falcons’ near miss. In the 145, South Whidbey’s Donnie Sutton trailed 5-0 in the second period when he let Sultan’s Gavyn Baird overplay his move and rolled him over for a pin, stunning South Whidbey and Sultan’s coaches.
Then, in other matches such as senior Tyler Russell’s in the 138, fortune favored the Turks. Trailing two points in the third period, Russell had a chance to fight for a stand but opted to try a reversal for two points and was flipped onto his back and pinned.
“I had to cut a lot of weight today,” Russell said, referring to trying to qualify for his weight division of 138 pounds. “I was pretty weak. I tried to go for the reversal to pin him because I saw it there, but I just didn’t have the strength to pull it through.”
South Whidbey’s top grappler Andy Madsen, a 152-pound senior, won his match with a 15-2 decision. Kyrell Broyles pinned Sultan junior Dylan Oster in the 160 in 3:23. Trevor Miller won the 220-pound match with a quick pin in 1:35, the first period.
South Whidbey travels for an all-day tournament at Rainier High School on Saturday, leaving little time to work on escaping and keeping weight low when on top of an opponent, both issues Thompson identified after the match.
