Wrestling placed second overall at NEPSAC Class A Championships this past weekend, claiming six individual championships. Team Abbot hosted the 13th annual Phillips Academy Female Tournament, winning the team title and capturing an additional four individual wins. U.S. Olympic gold medalist Helen Maroulis served as a guest clinician for the team, providing techniques and tips to female wrestlers.
Competing in a tournament against seven NEPSAC teams, the team trained endurance as the postseason began. Narek Hambardzumyan ’26 commented on its training schedule.
“When you’re doing dual meets, there are matches that go a lot quicker that don’t enter the second or third round. In the tournament, that happens much more often and in those types of situations, it’s really important to have good conditioning to make sure that you don’t get gassed. Even after every practice, we’re always working on conditioning too,” said Hambardzumyan.
Serra Akyali ’28 became the first Andover female to win a Class A title in the co-ed division. Co-Captain Julian Rios ’26 won four total Class A titles, the first to do so in team history. The team also saw major success in the girls division, coming second as a team and claiming four individual championship titles: Cindy Zhou ’27, Lisa de Boer ’26, Bella Shmuylovich ’26, and Toni Elliott ’27. Hambardzumyan attributed the team’s success to its support for each other.
“It’s a lot different than your normal meet since everyone’s having matches at different times and sometimes it’s hard to get to watch everyone’s matches because people are having matches at the same time. But everyone on the team actively tries to always watch other people’s matches and whenever we are watching the matches, everyone’s cheering them on,” said Hambardzumyan.
On Sunday, Wrestling won the 13th annual Phillips Academy Female Tournament. Captain Tasha Bohorad ’26, Akyali, Shmuylovich, and Elliot all won individual titles. Along with these stellar performances, Bohorad highlighted Kierra Ong ’29 for her great work ethic.
“[Kierra] is a new wrestler and she’s been working super hard every day after practice. I’ve talked to so many people, they can see that the stuff we’re working on in practice and the stuff that we go over after practice, she’s using it every single match. I can see her getting better and better, so that’s the type of mindset people strive to embody [and] is a really good persistence and consistency that I respect,” said Bohorad.
Helen Maroulis, the first U.S female Olympian to win gold for wrestling, was a guest clinician for the team. Bohorad detailed Maroulis’s words of advice to the team.
“The fact that she did everything with us and she really guided us through everything, [is obviously] a sign of a good coach, but you can see how someone’s character really affects the sport, and how they communicate with other people. When she was drilling on me, she’d walk around and help us and see things that we’re doing and then correct us, which is very common in coaching, but it was super constructive. That was really great, especially because she got to demonstrate some moves on me. It was really cool to see how she does those moves as someone who’s practiced this a bunch of times and who can hit really high level moves in. It was great to have [this], especially through the Abbot grant fund,” said Bohorad.
As the team approaches the end of the season, Gauri Bhakta ’28 reflected on what the team should work on to find continued success in the postseason.
“Wrestling is an individual sport, so it differs for every single person. We can work on just being more aggressive from the first whistle [and] taking good shots. If someone takes a good shot on us, sprawling and getting our hips down, and then working good breakdowns.[Also] making sure we don’t take bad shots [and] we don’t make teeny, tiny mistakes, which can cost us the match. Just paying attention to details could really make a difference for sure,” said Bhakta.
Wrestling will continue its postseason advance at New England Championships on Saturday.
