Havre de Grace wrestlers take down shorthanded Fallston, 65-15

Randy McRoberts, The Aegis, Bel Air, Md.
·4 min read

Jan. 27—Taking advantage of multiple forfeits, the Havre de Grace wrestling team won big over visiting Fallston, 65-15, Tuesday in an Upper Chesapeake Bay Athletic Conference dual meet.

The Cougars forfeited seven matches, half the weight classes. In the seven contested bouts, Havre de Grace held a 4-3 edge.

"Overall, we have a fairly new team, nobody is out here with a lot of experience," Warriors coach David Rathfon said. "For those kids to come out and battle the way they did, I thought that was great. We're always looking for growth, we're always looking for them to just be battling and never be on the back foot. Give it their best and I think that's all we as coaches can ask for. Overall, I think they did really well."

The meet's first match at 106 pounds paired up two freshmen who saw each other last weekend. In that match, Havre de Grace's Connor Birth scored a first-period pin over Aiden Fodel of Fallston. In Wednesday's match, the roles were reversed and Fodel scored the pin over Birth in 1:20.

"I wrestled him at this tournament and he beat me pretty good. He pinned me in the first, like 30 seconds," Fodel said. "I just must have been off, but today I felt it went really good. I got back points and then I got the pin eventually."

Fodel said he was a bit surprised at the outcome.

"It honestly kind of did," he said. "I wasn't expecting to go out there and get thrown around, but I wasn't expecting to go out there and take control of the match."

Fodel's win gave the Cougars a 6-0 lead, but it quickly evaporated with the first forfeit and then three wrestled wins for the Warriors.

Isabella Olivas accepted the forfeit at 113, while Andrew Higgins gave Havre de Grace its first contested win at 120. Higgins pinned Gabe Letke 30 seconds into the second period.

Liam Logan followed at 126 with a dominating win over Jake Duffy. Logan scored multiple back points, but Duffy avoided a pin. Logan scored a 16-0 technical fall with 50 seconds left in the third period.

Noah Goad won for the Warriors win at 132, pinning Esteban Koukoulis in 3:14.

At 138, Havre de Grace's Ayden Boyd was a forfeit winner.

Fallston snapped the Warriors win streak with its final two victories of the meet. At 145, Ben Ziervogel was in full control from the start, en route to a 2:33 pin of Bugansoa Zakari, while in a little tougher match, Greg Matthews eked out a 9-8 decision over Kasaan Dornelus at 152. The match was tied at 8 with time running out when Matthews scored an escape with 10 seconds left.

From there, a 29-15, Havre de Grace scoring edge ran quickly to 53-15 as a result of four forfeits. Collecting the wins were Christian Baldwin (160), Adam Diallo (170), Alysa Kaptain (182) and Jacob Gillich (195).

The final contested match came at 220 and was the quickest work of the night. Havre de Grace senior Zachary Hamilton needed just eight seconds to pin Evan Conner.

"Last match I didn't do so well against Joppatowne, I didn't get pinned, but I still lost," Hamilton said. "I kind of came into this match with a chip on my shoulder, so I just went out there and I was like, I got to get it done and it happened, shocked myself."

The final weight class went to Havre de Grace's Nikolas Bowers by forfeit.

"The kids that wrestled, wrestled well," Cougars coach Kevin Medicus said. "Like I said, it's a constant work in progress. Missing so many days because of weather, COVID. We need to put aside the distractions of COVID and things we really can't control so much and focus on the things that we can control. Just continue to practice hard, come out and wrestle hard and things will fall into place. We're going to get better, we've already made strides since day one."