’Cats, Cards post solid days at team duals

Keystone and Brookside both came away feeling good about themselves at the Division II OHSAA team dual tournament at Norwalk on Jan. 24, with both teams winning a round.

No. 8 Keystone and No. 9 Firelands matched to a 36-36 draw, but the Wildcats got the nod off of criteria “D,” the team with the most match wins and won, 37-36. Keystone had the 7-6 in matches won before falling to No. 1 Perkins, 56-18. No. 10 Brookside topped No. 7 Vermilion, 45-35, before losing to No. 2 Bellevue, 54-28.

Two freshmen lower weights came up big for Keystone against the Falcons in Jacob Kincaid (120) and Nick Beriswell (126). After Keystone fell behind, 12-0, Kincaid came up with a 12-10 overtime win over the Falcons’ Ben Brinton.

Kincaid trailed, 8-4, before battling back to force overtime and pick up the win.

“It was a pretty tough match,” Kincaid said. “My chest was hurting towards the end and I just kept taking shots on him. Some of them didn’t work, but I just kept getting on top of him. However, I have a lot of endurance, so I can battle through a long match. Once I get to overtime, I just want to win and go for points.”

Beriswell picked up a key 5-2 overtime decision over Garrett Tester, picking up a couple of huge takedowns.

Keystone also got wins from Hudson Hall (152), Jose Moralez (160), David McCullough (182), Travis McCullough (195) and Justin Ocheltree (220). It was the first time in coach Chris Vondruska’s three years at Keystone he has beaten Firelands.

“The two freshmen did good and they both are relatively experienced wrestlers,” Vondruska said. “I think Jacob put himself in a hole and then fought a way out of it. Beriswell faced a guy he had a hard time scoring on but he pushed the pace the whole match and he didn’t let anything bother him. He didn’t let anything bother him and he locked hands one time and didn’t let it bother him. That was the difference in keeping his head.

“Firelands is in our conference and we always want to beat them. They’re in our sectional, so we’re going to see some headto-head matchups. We’re going to see them at our place Feb. 1 and I’ve never beaten Firelands, so that was a win for me. So to get a win even by criteria, I’ll take it.”

Firelands coach Josh Walbom had to make a couple of late scratches to his lineup, but knew his team would be in a battle.

“In the last minute we had to fill in some guys that don’t really have a lot of experience,” Walbom said. “I told them before the match to just go out there and wrestle their hearts out and they did. Make sure they didn’t give up a pin and they did. We thought mathematically we would be able to take it, but we were close. They did everything we asked them to do.”

The Cardinals beating county rival Vermilion was huge for Seth Houston’s program, picking up seven pins in the process and winning eight of the 14 matches.

Junior David Ocasio (120) went 2-0 on the day, both pins in a combined 1:42 minutes.

“It meant everything to us to beat Vermilion,” Ocasio said. “We knew going in that they were from the same county and it was a big match. Our coach said from the beginning: ‘We want Vermilion.’ And we came out there firing on all cylinders and got it done. I feel really great right now. I struggled early in the season trying to clean up my technique, but today I was going good. All of our guys are getting well-conditioned and we’re very close to hitting on all cylinders.”

Junior Eric Shafer (152) beat Dillon Henry in a close 18-17 decision, picking up a key three points for Brookside.

Houston added that the Cardinals have taken a different approach this season, hoping to peak when it matters most.

“We used to always come out strong as a team, and things fell apart by the end,” Houston said. “So the focus really is keeping guys healthy, which is where we’re at now, and when the pieces fall into place, we’re starting to look a lot better. I’m happy with how we wrestled against Vermilion and looked pretty solid. We’re starting to see the young guys buy into the system.”