Cortland Standard .net

By TANEY BEAUMONT
Staff Writer
The Cortland High wrestling team’s biggest match of the year turned into its biggest disappointment Wednesday night.
With a share of first place in the OHSL Freedom Division on the line and riding a 29-match winning streak, the Purple Tigers fell to visiting Mexico 40-24.
Coach Dave Darrow’s squad is now 2-2 in the league and 29-2 overall., The victorious Tigers — the fourth ranked small-school team in the state — are perfect in five league matches this season with only a matchup with winless Oswego to go, and are 8-5 overall.
“That was horrible, the worst match we’ve wrestled in three years,” Darrow said quietly as fans filed out of CHS’s lower gym.
“We had everything we needed. We started where we wanted,” he added, as the match began in the 285-pound weight class.”It should have been a one- or two-point match either way. We wrestled flat for the first time since our first match of the year.”
That was Cortland’s only other loss, a 45-21 season-opening stumble to visiting Fulton back on Dec. 3. In another key Freedom Division match last night, a Phoenix team that fell to CHS just last week pulled off a 41-24 upset win over Fulton.
“We’ll have to rally and do better,” said Darrow of his Purple Tigers, who will head to the Section 3 Duals on Saturday.
“The key was that we lost the first match and it changed the whole mindset,” he added of the Mexico match. “We started slowly, and that set the tone. They have four or five great wrestlers, and we figured that to beat them we’d have to win seven or eight weight classes. The match was over after the first one.”
The opening bout saw Mexico junior Jason Bond get a takedown and three back points in the middle stanza for a 5-0 win over CHS senior Nick Edmond. “Nick is a great wrestler, but when you give up 60 pounds like he did, one mistake and that’s it,” Darrow said. “I WAS VERY surprised,” Mexico coach Bill Kays said of the final margin of vitory. “Our kids have worked hard all year, faced stiff competition and came ready. Cortland wrestled well; that’s a very good team. But we wrestled well, too, and were able to pull it out.”
“Bonds had a big surprise win for us. That kid (Edmond) is good. I knew that the rest of the way it would be a battle. We were going for our second straight league championship, which was a little extra incentive. Cortland has had a great season so far, and this was a big win for us,” he added.
Junior Mike Bay gave the hosts their only lead in the next bout when he pinned Dean Shambo in 3:32, improving to 26-7 with 19 pins on the season in the process. Mexico junior Austin O’Reilly raised his record to 25-5 (14 pins) when he flattened sophomore Dane George in 3:07 to give the visitors the lead for good. Tigers junior Theo Powers ran his record to 31-3 with a 9-2 decision at 113 over junior Trent Jones. Junior Hunter Howland notched his 30th win of the season for Mexico, against five losses, as 120 with an 8-3 win over junior Jake Smith to give his team a 15-6 lead.
Sophomore Kiegan Brown got Cortland’s only pin of the night when he put sophomore Curtis Dimon’s shoulders to the mat in 2:50 to improve to 18-4 (8), making it a 15-12 Tigers lead. The two teams then split a pair of close divisions. Mexico senior Mitchell Shambo improved to 29-11 with a 2-0 win over junior Isaiah Brookman on a second-period reversal before CHS senior Drew Towers escaped in the middle stanza for the only point in his match with junior Tylor Allard to improve to 30-4.
Mexico led 18-15 at that point but then won the next five weight classes to end the suspense. A technical fall in 5:06 by senior Austin Whitney (38-2) over senior Grant Tinker, now 33-3, started the winners’ string of success before another close bout, Mexico senior Derick Gracey (17-11) getting the winning points on a takedown with 15 seconds left to beat junior Russell Gerhard.
“I CHOSE THE bottom position to start the third period (leading 6-5) and had to get out,” Gracey said. “I had a takedown late in a 170-pound match against Fulton earlier this year. I think I should have wrestled better tonight than I did.
“We came in looking for two league championships in a row and thought it would be closer. Coach told us before the match that it would be a couple of points either way.”
Another close bout saw Mexico senior Jay Kisselstein (31-6) blank sophomore Schuyler Miller at 160. Senior Trevor Allard, who won the Division II state championship at 160 last year, improved to 32-1 with a technical fall in 5:10 over Cortland senior Chace Bentley before teammate Jacob Woolson (32-7-10) gave the visitors a 40-15 lead by pinning sophomore James Barbarito in 3:42.
Cortland sophomore Dakoatah Miller took the lead over sophomore Brandon Gracey at 195 on a reversal with six seconds left in the second period, then rode Gracey out in the third to improve to 29-4. Purple Tigers sophomore Reilly Brown (29-6) won by forfeit at 220 to account for the final margin.
Cortland and Mexico will be compete at the Section 3 Dual Meet Wrestling Championships Saturday at Cicero-North Syracuse.
The Purple Tigers are seeded fifth and will take on No. 12 Marcellus (14-2) in an upper bracket first-round match at 10 a.m.. Mexico is the third seed and will open with No. 14 Vernon-Verona-Sherrill in the lower bracket at 11:45 a.m.
The title match is slated to start around 5 p.m. later that day.