On Mon., Feb. 17, 2014, the Wrestling team traveled to River Hill High School to compete in the 3A/4A Regional Semi-Final Duals.
The Bobcats earned the second seed going into the Semi-Final matches and wrestled fourth seeded Old Mill High School for their first match of the day. Senior Captain Cyler Crawford got the first win of the day, recording a pin in the first period of the match. Old Mill then rebounded from the opening loss and got the next two wins. Junior David Reagan earned the ‘Cats six points from a forfeit to tie the match up at 12. After the Reagan forfeit, Senior Gavin Rupprecht pinned his opponent to add another six points to the team score. The Bobcats and Old Mill then exchanged wins for the next six matches. Juniors Brady Stafford and Cameron Watts and Senior Sam Guo all added three points to the Bobcat score. Senior Captains John Cross and Grant Fleming paired up to get the next two wins of the match to help secure the 38-28 Bobcat victory.
“Our first match was really solid,” Senior Grant Fleming said. “Everyone wrestled really hard to get the win the move on to the next round of regionals and we did what we had to do.”
The Bobcats took on the hosting and top ranked River Hill High School for the qualifying match to get to Regional Finals. The Bobcats got off to a slow start by giving up two pins for 12 points right from the jump. Junior David Reagan pinned his opponent in the last period of his match to make the team score 12-6. After Reagan’s win, the Bobcats and River Hill exchanged four wins. Old Mill pulled slightly ahead, adding four points to bring the score to 22-18. Seniors Gavin Rupprecht and Ryan Beveridge both added the wins in the four win exchange. After the Beveridge pin, Junior Cameron Watts and Seniors Sam Guo and Captain John Cross added three consecutive wins to help increase the Bobcat lead to 30-22. Then Old Mill received a technical fall to add five points to the team score to take the score to 30-27. A technical fall occurs when one man beats his opponent by ten or more points. Old Mill then went on a three match win streak to take the lead, 36-30. At the end of the match, Old Mill had a forfeit, adding six points to the Bobcats score to tie up the match at 36-36.
Overtime was not an option; referees went to the rule book to determine who will move to Regional Finals. The rule book said they would declare the winner if any team had a flagrant or misconduct or unsportsmanlike conduct but neither team had violated those rules. The next rule would be if a head coach, which again neither coach had, violated those rules. After the referees looked at each of the stat books and eliminated each of the rules they finally came to the conclusion of a winner, which was Old Mill. Old Mill had won the match due to the fact they had one technical fall in the match, putting them over the edge to get the win to the move on to the Regional Finals.
“It was a well wrestled match,” stated Coach Reddish. “Both teams wrestled their hardest and it was a hard fought match. It’s tough to lose a match that close, but the wrestlers wrestled to their fullest potential but unfortunately we fell short.”
The Bobcats unfortunately do not qualify for 3A/4A Regional Finals, but on Fri., Feb. 21 and Sat., Feb. 22, the Bobcats will compete in the UCBAC Tournament to fight for an UCBAC Championship.