Today we have a special report on our season opening tournament at Barrington. All words and pictures are by Senior Wrestler Ronald Tucker Jr.
The Porter wrestling team kicked off the 2018-2019 season by participating in the Moore-Prettyman Tournament at Barrington High School this past Friday and Saturday.
The Porters, coming off a 12-9 season, finished in second place with 213.5 points behind Marmion Academy’s 260 points. Coming in third was Libertyville with 159.5 points, who had two champions themselves.
This season is consisting of what seems to be similar of last season in regards to the lineup. As the season is now underway, there are a few new faces in the lineup, especially in the upper weights. The team only lost five varsity letter winners due to graduation and transfers. The Porters lineup was almost at full potential. As many may already know, the tournament allows schools to bring two wrestlers at each weight class and the team was able to bring eleven extras. Those eleven wrestlers weren’t allowed to be scored for the team race but if those eleven were scored, they would’ve taken 16th place out of 29 teams by themselves.
The team had 14 wrestlers scoring and 11 non-scoring, and we had 9 out of the 14 scoring wrestlers place top 8 and 3 of the eleven non-scoring also place top 8 as well.
At 106 the Porters had Ryan Oster, who is a returning varsity letter winner, who was just a match short of placing losing in the wrestlebacks by decision (10-5). A new face was for the Porter's is Alex Vukobratovich who won his first match but sadly his tournament ended shortly after losing his next two matches.
From 113 to 126 we had three champions in Keegan Roberson, Matt Ramos, and Anthony “Big Tone” Molton. Keegan coming in as a freshman at his first varsity tournament taking 1st in dominant fashion by only giving up two points the entire tournament. Also at 113 we had senior Jake Lukaszczyk take third place after losing in the quarterfinals to the eventual runner up. Ramos came out on top of a loaded bracket that had 4 state placers, beating Michael Jaffe of Marmion in the finals and earning the Outstanding wrestler award. Where as Big Tone wrestled a great tourney as well, beating 2A state champion, Dean Hamiti, in what was an exciting match by a score of 20-14.
Between 132 and 145 we had 3 wrestlers place top 8. At 132 Mikey Kaminski took 4th place and Nate Ramsey posted a 2-2 record. Jake D’angelo, the lone 138 pounder, took 5th place after fighting through a tough bracket. At 145 we had Senior Matt Mahalik post a 3-2 record and Anthony Crapia who took 8th place.
Our only 152 pounder, Baylor Fernandes, spent less than a total of 4 minutes on the mat before his finals match pinning everyone in the first period. He then beat #4 ranked Joe Roberts in the finals by a final score of 10-3.
At 160 we had two placers as well with Malik Dagash taking 5th and Kyle Boone taking 7th. These two did wrestle each other in the quarterfinal wrestleback with Dagash squeezing out the win. A notable match was Malik taking last year’s runner up down to the wire. Malik was beating Marmion’s Brad Gross before he got pinned in the third period.
At 170 we had two juniors wrestle with Brandon Gamagami going 2-2 and Cameron Viar losing his first two matches which were against tough opponents. Same thing occurred at 182 where we had a Junior in Mikey Kinney as he went 2-2 falling one match short of placing. The other 182 pounder is sophomore Jon Kratz who lost his first two matches as well.
In the 195 pound weight class was Freshman Drew Blackburn-Forst who took 7th place losing to much older opponents and Drew only weighs 180 pounds! Also there was Junior Andy Navarro who also weighs 180 pounds, who lost his first two matches. In the 220 weight class we had sophomore Mario Herrera who was 2 matches away from placing and Junior Jake Rosin who dropped his first two matches. To round it out there was Senior Ryan Schenk in the 285 pound weight class who posted a 1-2 record. There was also Sophomore Brendon Shin who made it to the semifinals where he lost to the eventual champion, Jose Ramos. He then took fifth after losing in the wrestlebacks to the third place wrestler and winning by pin in :26 seconds in the 5th place match.
