On Fri., Feb. 21 and Sat., Feb. 22 2014, the Wrestling Team travelled to Aberdeen High School to compete in the UCBAC Championships.
The Bobcats went into the tournament seeded first of all the teams in the conference and the ‘Cats also had a hand full of wrestlers come into the tournament at a high seed in their weight class. The way UCBAC’s were formatted was each team would put one wrestler in each weight class and they would wrestle individually. At the end of their match, if they won, their points were added to the overall team score to help determine the UCBAC Champion.
At the end of the day one of the two day UCBAC competition, the Bobcat’s lead with a score of 98 points and a solid 32 point advantage. The second day of competition was very successful for the ‘Cats, having eleven of the wrestlers place top four in their weight class. Three of the eleven wrestlers ended up being county champions: Junior Cameron Watts (145) and Senior Captains John Cross (145) and Cyler Crawford (195). The Bobcats also had Junior David Reagan (106) and Seniors Ryan Beveridge (132) and Captain Grant Fleming (170) place 2nd for their weight classes. The team also added five more who placed third in their weight class; Freshman Tom Gomez (182),Sophomore Dakota Crawford (285), Junior Drew Dyer (220) and Seniors Gavin Rupprecht (113) and Sam Guo (138). The Bobcats had a great individual outcome with 10 of the 14 wrestlers place in their weight class and helping the team come out on top.
Not only did the Bobcats have the most members place in their weight class, they won the 2014 UCBAC Championship. They beat out the second place team, Bo Manor, by more than 100 points to secure the UCBAC title. The finished the weekend with a total of 258.5 total team points and ten wrestlers placed top four in the county. The past three years the ‘Cats fell a little short of the championship title, and the team is proud to finally pull through and bring the title home.
“We wrestled our best,” stated Senior Captain Grant Fleming. “We dominated not only individually, but as a team by beating Bo Manor (the second place team) by more than 100 points. Everyone wrestled very well and coming out with the championship was awesome”
“I am very proud of how the team wrestled this weekend,” stated Coach Reddish. “It was great to see some JV guys come up to Varsity to wrestle and now have them qualify for states. It’s been a while since we won UCBAC’s and it feels great to bring it back to Bel Air.”
Up next for the wrestling team is individual Regional Tournament which is taking place at North East High School in Anne Arundel County on Fri., Feb. 28 and Sat., Mar. 1 2014. Twelve of the fourteen wrestlers qualified to compete in the Regional tournament, the most the program has ever had.