South Whidbey expected to do better against Granite Falls than its 51-21 loss Thursday.
Considering the team’s youth, inexperience and repositioned weights, the outing wasn’t too bad, according to South Whidbey head coach Jim Thompson.
“It’s not something we can’t fix,” said senior co-captain Evan Thompson. “We wrestled tough, but we had some key mistakes that cost us, overall.”
Thompson added: “This is good, because we get all those bad matches out of the way to keep working for the end of the season.”
Three Falcons won their matches with pins.
Thompson pinned JB Short in the second period in the 145-pound division. He almost won in the first period on a pin, but Short escaped and evaded until the buzzer.
“It was good,” Thompson said. “Conference pins, they’re a lot better than the tournament ones, because it matters at the end of the season. I was sitting there hoping I’d get him in the first period, but then when I didn’t, it was kind of, ‘Well, I get more practice.’”
His fellow senior co-captain, Ben Ross, pinned Quinton Morgen within 34 seconds of the second period at the 152 class. Then Jeremiah Robey held on to win 9-7 against Gerin Wilson, and escaped a pin in the final seconds after nearly pinning Wilson in the first period.
Christian Justus pinned Tommy Eadle in the final seconds of the third period of the 189 class. Justus wrestled up from his usual 171-pound class.
Senior Van Morgen, an all-conference grappler, suffered his first Cascade Conference defeat since his sophomore year against Brandon Gilbertson.
Morgen wrestled up a weight class and normally wrestles at 152. That wasn’t an excuse or consolation for Morgen as he watched the other matches.
“It feels pretty bad,” Morgen said of his first loss in more than a year. “I wanted to get revenge on this guy [Gilbertson], because he beat me my sophomore year; he was my last conference loss.”
Coach Thompson said Morgen should have won his match.
“He just got sloppy,” he said. “He needs to stop using the legs.”
South Whidbey had only a day to recover before it faces Lynnwood at today’s Mount Vernon Tournament. Thompson will only have seven wrestlers on varsity and put everyone else on junior varsity so they get valuable mat time and experience.
