Bay takes second place

Hosting the Division II sectional wrestling tournament has its privileges.

Bay couldn’t keep the team championship at home this season, finishing second in the 11-team event with 202.5 points, 17.5 behind champion Padua (220). But the Rockets advanced nine district qualifiers and added two sectional champions — three-time champion Matthew Cover (195) and Klevin Mici (220) — on Feb. 24.

Cover (38-1), a junior, defeated Keystone’s Justin Ochletree (41-5) in a rematch of last year’s sectional championship match, 4-2, after giving up an early takedown.

“I wrestled Justin the past two years and he’s real tough, so it kind of felt the same this time around,” Cover said. “It’s always a tough match when we’re going head-to-head. You make adjustments. He makes adjustments and you just try to work a different style. I expected it to be tougher, and it was.

“It’s really nice having this at home, having my friends here out watching. It’s just another cool experience all together.”

Cover said the team championship wasn’t really that important to him and his teammates — they were more proud of the nine wrestlers who punched their tickets to next weekend’s district tournament at Norwalk High School.

“It’s been really impressive, getting nine guys out and four alternates out of all 13 wrestlers we brought,” said Cover, the son of coach Ryan Cover. “We’ll go through this week and go into Friday with a full squad at districts. They’ve all been working hard and everyone’s been pushing each other in the room. It’s been real good.”

Mici (32-11), a junior, pinned Keystone’s Nick Hickman in 3:46 for his first sectional crown.

Firelands, which finished fourth in the team standings, wound up with two individual champions to bookend the sectionals in 106-pound sophomore Payton Burgdorf (39-0) and 285-pound senior Sean Lipscomb (431). Those two headlined the list of six district qualifiers for the Falcons.

For Lipscomb, his 11-2 major decision win over Bay’s Brendan O’Doherty in the heavyweight final was also his 150th career victory.

“It feels more than good — it feels fantastic, amazing, extravagant, in the most profound way,” Lipscomb said. “It wasn’t easy. Anybody who is working hard to accomplish anything in their life realizes that it’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice to do it.

“There’s a lot of different factors that go into tournaments, and to come out on top after all of those factors is tremendous. Heavyweight is always last, so you warm up more than once because you sit for so long, and you do it three times in the same day. It can tire you out, but to overcome that tiredness and come out on top is very rewarding.”