Healdsburg captures SCL wrestling championship
Published: Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 9:00 p.m.
WINDSOR — The reason Healdsburg didn't finish in the middle of the pack this wrestling season is that the Greyhounds owned the middle of the pack.
At the Sonoma County League wrestling championships at Windsor High on Saturday, the five lightest and five heaviest divisions were more or less up for grabs.
The middle four? All Healdsburg.
Adam Hendrickson won at 137 pounds, Travis Arreguin at 142, Matthrew Tsarnas at 147 and Dillon Cattalini at 152, leading the Greyhounds to a tournament victory that cemented their league title. Healdsburg was undefeated in dual meets this season.
Of those four middleweight battles, Hendrickson's was probably the most entertaining. He entered the tournament seeded second behind Sonoma Valley's Jordan Winslow, but it was Hendrickson who was No. 1 both in official North Coast Section rankings and in the most recent Press Democrat rankings.
The two wrestlers have similar builds and styles, and their match was predictably grueling. Hendrickson fell behind 3-1 before fighting back for a 5-4 win. He suffered cuts below his nose and right eye and was poked in the left eye in the process; by the end of the match he looked like an extra from “The Hurt Locker,” his face and head encircled by bandages.
One championship match that didn't involve Healdsburg was the highly anticipated 114-pound showdown.
The 112/114s may have been the toughest division in the Empire this year. They almost certainly were in the SCL, where Windsor's Andres Torres, El Molino's Blake Borges and Healdsburg's Salvador Guzman all entered the weekend ranked in the NCS top 5. Sonoma Valley's Alberto Bandt is in their class, too, but missed time this year after his airbag deployed during a car accident and left him with a friction burn on his arm and a moderate case of whiplash.
Saturday, Torres defeated Bandt and Borges beat Guzman in the semifinals. Torres then took down Borges in the final.
“He's always a tough match. We've wrestled since middle school,” said Torres, a junior. “The key was I wrestled tough and physical. I think I wore him down.”
In NCS last year, Torres beat Borges on a reversal with nine seconds left, a decision that secured his spot in the CIF state tournament.
Guzman won the third-place match at 114 on Saturday, which is significant because the top three finishers in each weight class advanced to the NCS tournament at Newark next weekend. Bandt is expected to receive an at-large bid.
The NCS seeding meeting is today, with a formal announcement expected the next day.
Other SCL winners Saturday included Analy's Brandon Riebli (287 pounds), El Molino's Jared Garner (217), El Mo's Brian Bennett (191), Petaluma's Dalton Berncich (173), Casa Grande's Vinny Fausone (162), Casa's Donovan Halpin (132), Sonoma Valley brothers Steve (127) and Evan Murden (121), and El Molino's Logan Fore (105 pounds).
Healdsburg will send a league-high 11 wrestlers to NCS, not including alternates. All of the other six SCL schools will be represented by four to six athletes.
The Murdens are both seniors, though Steve is a year older. He won the title by default Saturday after Healdsburg's Trey Saulter felt a twinge in his just-healed shoulder and decided to bow out of the championship match. Evan Murden claimed a close, 8-6 victory over El Molino's Rio Nance, fighting back from a 6-3 deficit with a takedown and a near-fall onto one shoulder in the last minute.
Both Murden brothers are hoping for No. 1 seeds at NCS.
El Molino finished second at the league tournament, putting six wrestlers into the finals and winning three of those matches. That punctuated a remarkable turnaround for the Lions, who were 0-6 in dual meets in 2008-09. They started this season with close losses to Healdsburg and Casa Grande, then won their final four.
El Mo served additional notice last Saturday, taking third place at the competitive NCS Duals Championship at Redwood High in Larkspur.
The Lions' resurgence isn't as sudden as it seems. Coach Bill Borges, who had two sons wrestling in the SCL tournament — sophomore Blake and senior Von, who wrestled at 162 pounds — has quietly been building a formidable team, largely on the strength of a popular K-8 summer program that has grown to about 30 kids.
“When I first got to El Mo, we had the hardest time trying to recruit kids,” Borges said. “If we did, they had no experience, or maybe one year. Now we're turning heads, especially on our campus.”
Best news for the Lions: Only three of their varsity wrestlers will graduate this year.
You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.
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