In the last seconds of his match, Adam Cohen ’18 scored a crucial takedown to secure the official win for Andover Wrestling over St. Paul’s. Rebounding from its 43-30 loss to Choate in its season opener last Saturday, Andover earned its first victory of the season by defeating St. Paul’s 45-30 in a home meet, bringing its record to 1-1.
Making their wrestling debuts for Andover, Post-Graduate (PG) John O’Brien ’17, PG Haroldo Nesbeth ’17, and Eamon Garrity-Rokous ’20 all had crucial victories by pins to help support the team’s effort against Choate.
Although ultimately losing their matches, David Moon ’17 and Quint Finney ’18 had competitive bouts against tough opponents.
Garrity-Rokous said, “[Finney and Moon] both wrestled well-fought matches as well, and never gave up and never stopped wrestling with absolute heart and audacity until the clock reached 0:00 at the end of each match.”
“I think [Finney] had a really good showing. David Moon hung in against some really tough kids and was able to hold off a pin for 90 seconds,” said Pablo Sanchez ’19.
Against St. Paul’s, Co-Captain Alex Cleveland ’17, wrestling at 113 pounds, added to Andover’s success with a strong pin. Nesbeth, Garrity-Rokous, O’Brien, and Cohen also helped secure wins for Andover.
In addition, Finney had a strong exhibition match. “Finney, who wrestled up eight pounds, wrestled a very tough match. He had a high-quality opponent and he held in there strong,” said Nesbeth.
Looking forward to future meets and the rest of the season, Andover hopes to improve on its physical toughness.
Sanchez said, “I think we need to toughen up. We let up too many points in the beginning of the meet and that cost us some points even though we won. I think we need to work on not getting pinned and get some more pins of our own.”
“We can improve on taking more shots. We tend to get flat-footed and that is problematic when we should always be looking to score points. We should work on being more stingy about giving up points and be more greedy and confident in picking up points,” said Nesbeth.
Andover looks to improve its record and keep working on its skills in a tri-meet with Andover High School and Brooks this Saturday.
