We lost both dual meets this weekend, but we are making progress. Sometimes it is hard to measure progress, but I know the guys are improving. I know they are getting better.
We wrestled at Clarion Saturday afternoon. Vince Rodriguez scored a takedown with a few seconds left in the match to beat his opponent; Sahid Kargbo beat his guy in overtime; and Ryan Forrest used a 4 point move in the third period to put us in the driver’s seat going into our last 4 matches. We were close to winning the next two matches, but lost the same way we had won the earlier matches. Zach Martinez was winning, made a rookie mistake, and lost with a few ticks of the clock to go in his match. Ryan Hembury lost in overtime. Matt Meadows won his bout, but Jake Kettler came up short in the final bout of the day. The 5 hour bus drive back to Fairfax was quiet. I spent lots of time pondering woulda, coulda, shoulda scenarios. I guess it was not meant to be.
We arrived on campus at about 930pm. Guys checked their weight. A few worked out. The rest of us went home for the short turn around. We met as a team at 645am Sunday morning to set up for our 9am dual against Bucknell and for guys to lose some weight (bad scheduling on my part).
We lost to Bucknell at the Virginia duals in January by a score of 27-9. This time we lost 26-10. We made a little progress. We did wrestle 3 different guys in our line-up. Bucknell had one new guy in their line-up. Greg Flournoy beat a guy who had beaten him in the dual in January. Greg wrestled a great match. I felt we wrestled Bucknell better at 7 of the 10 contested matches. At the weight classes we lost some ground, I think we can get it back.
We will only compete once next weekend. Sunday we will be at Bloomsburg. Last year, Bloomsburg shut us out. My hope is we will continue to improve and to show that improvement when we compete.
masonwrestling 