Minutemen Pick up Two Wins in Pingry Tri

The Minutemen continued their steady improvement on the mat and extended their winning streak to three, taking both legs of their tri-meet in Martinsville.  The Middle School grapplers first took the mat against their ancient, Big Blue rivals in a rematch of the season’s opening contest.  With each wrestler showing improvement from their early season efforts, the Minutemen found a way to break the inital meet, tie score log-jam, winning the contest 21-9.  Classmates Yihun Stith ’22 and Logan Pak ’22 excited the assembled crowd with high energy efforts, both of which culminated in pins.  In thier rematches of the season's first showdown, rookie wrestlers Jacob Tolentino’24 and L.J. Hines '24 flipped the script, each picking up their first career wins; Tolentino won by pin and Hines went the distance winning his match on points. 

 

In their second contest of the day, the Middle School grapplers took on the Peck School for the first time in history.  Cameron Wright ’23 and Evan Wang ’24 both added six points to the team column with pins, and Yihun Stith’22 finished his day 2-0 with a victory by major decision.  Kyle Fink ’23 and Shreyas Hariharan ’24 put up Herculean efforts in their matches; both wrestlers fought off pins with tremendous grit and sheer force of will, preventing Peck from collecting six points and keeping the squad's chances alive.  With the Minutemen down by three points, and the match on the line, newcomer Dylan Erdogan ’24 stepped out on the mat to take on a talented opponent.  Despite fighting hard throughout the first period, the sixth grader found himself down 4-0 after the first frame.  In the second period, Erdogan again found himself at a point of disadvantage when his dogged efforts paid off.  At the first glance of an opportunity, Erdogan deftly pounced on his opening, scoring a reversal that turned into a pin and a walk-off, three point victory for the squad.  With their record improved to 3-4-1, the Minutemen look forward to the final contests of the season.