Sports Winter Sports Wrestling

Boys Pin Hyde For First Victory

Andover Wrestling secured its first win of the season against Hyde 39-31. Following its victory on Saturday, the team fell 33-28 to Deerfield.

Zizo Bahnasy ’17, wrestling in the 138-pound weight class, pinned his Hyde opponent in the fourth minute of the round. Holden Ringer ’17 then worked hard to get a pin at 1:34 in the 145-pound weight class. Ian Blythe ’16, Christian Milotte ’16 and Pierce Bausano ’18 also added points to Andover’s first victory of the season.

Against Deerfield, Andover started off on a strong note when Ringer and Blythe claimed wins. After Andover suffered two losses, John Little ’15 and Bausano managed to get pins in 0:48 and 0:57, respectively. These impressive individual performances were not enough to take the meet.

Andover squared off against Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) on Friday. With 2:11 left on the clock, Alex Humphreys ’15 pinned his opponent in the second round of the 285-pound competition to put Andover ahead 6-0. Quint Finney ’18 then competed at 113 pounds, coming back after being down 0-2 at the end of the first round to win 6-2. Despite matching his opponent’s intensity, Evan Park ’18 fell in the 126-pound division. Andover lost the meet 57-9.

“I played a little defensively. I could have taken more shots and been more aggressive. Our team is pretty young, and many of our starters are banged up. Even with the things that we are facing, we are still able to stay ahead in these matches,” said Park.

The nine points that Andover earned in the beginning proved to be the team’s only points of the match. Andover fell by a large margin to NMH, 57-9.

Finney said, “I knew that I would really regret it if I didn’t work hard the entire match, and I knew that coming off that mat losing would make me think later on about why I didn’t work harder.”

John Rauen ’17 added, “The team has a lot to do, and we have to work harder. We have a pretty good season ahead of us. If we work hard in practice we can get to the next level.”

Determined to win its second meet and redeem itself from disappointing performances over the weekend, Andover faced Tabor on Wednesday. Andover began the day well with Alex Cleveland ’17, Park and Rauen all claiming wins. Finney was defeated with 21 seconds left. Andover ended the meet with another overwhelming loss, 63-18.

“Today we wrestled Tabor, the number-two-ranked team in New England and one of the best teams we will face this season,” said Head Coach Rich Gorham. “Park was my wrestler of the meet. He got his first Varsity win today with a pin, and he wrestled a complete match all the way through, listened to his coaches and worked very hard.”

Andover will wrestle Roxbury Latin, Belmont Hill and Loomis Chaffee this Saturday as it looks for its second victory.