Wrestling Splits Tri-Meet Against Choate and Nobles

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First-year wrestler Oscar Bunting ’21 performed “The Bulgarian” on his Choate opponent at the Andover Wrestling tri-meet this Saturday, securing a 14-2 win. Bunting’s victory helped Andover defeat Choate 67-6, but the team fell to Nobles 46-29. The team’s record now sits at 5-3 overall and 3-0 in the Class A league.

The Bulgarian is a recovery move where the wrestler is on their knees, comes out the back of their opponent’s legs, and flips their opponent. According to Co-Captain Eamon Garrity-Rokous ’20 and Nick Buehler ’21, Bunting’s move was one of the meet’s highlights.

“I’d say Oscar’s first match against Choate was [a] really good standout performance; he did super well. He worked moves that we’ve been practicing all week in practice and then he executed them in the match, which was really cool to see,” said Garrity-Rokous.

Buehler added, “We were drilling a move called The Bulgarian in practice pretty much all week. [Bunting is] a first year wrestler and he hit it beautifully and just crushed that kid out.”

By drilling moves like The Bulgarian and other skills like second shot finishes, a second attack following a failed first attack, Bunting and the rest of the team were able to perform well as a whole, according Garrity-Rokous.

Garrity-Rokous said, “We worked on a lot of stuff that would definitely turn out to be useful, like we worked on sprawls and second shot finishes, things like that… I think I think the stuff we practiced all week definitely proved to be useful.”

According to Head Coach Kassie Archambault ’06, Garrity-Rokous, Co-Captain Marisol Nugent ’20, and several other wrestlers had impressive wins.

“Eamon and Marisol both went 2-0 for the day. Thomas Radzik PG ’20 won an exciting 3-0 match at 285 [pounds] against Choate… Colin Nugent ’23, who was champion at 126 pounds at the Tabor Tournament in December, also won his match on Saturday. It’s exciting to have such a young team, as we have lots of opportunity for growth,” wrote Archambault in an email to The Phillipian.

The team’s endurance and positioning has been one of its strengths and it plans to work on conditioning, aggressiveness, and offensive movement going forward, according to Archambault.

“We are improving every week. We are learning to stay in good position or to get ourselves back into good position. We still have things we need to work on, like movement off bottom or being more aggressive in our offensive on the feet,” wrote Archambault.

Andover will compete against Phillips Exeter Academy, Deerfield, and Hyde (ME) at Exeter this Saturday.