WAYNESBORO – The Waynesboro varsity wrestling team trailed Big Spring 25-15 with four matches remaining in their Mid-Penn Colonial Division matchup, but the Indians finished strong by winning all four en route to a 37-25 victory on Pink Out Night.
Tribe head coach David Swink, who spoke before the varsity contest about the cause and the wrestling program’s fundraising for cancer research, praised his grapplers for gutting out some tough matches and not giving up excessive bonus points in order to keep the match tight heading into the final bouts.
Then, after Jayden Rooney recorded a fall in 1:08 in the 133-pound match to cut the deficit to 25-21 and David Ochoa received a forfeit at 139 pounds, Swink sent out Garrett Price to wrestle at 145 pounds in what proved to be the clinching win as Price worked for a quick first-period pin to give the Indians a 33-25 lead.
Garrett Lowans closed out the meet with a 13-3 win at 152 pounds.
“Honestly, I think the biggest thing tonight that was the key to our success was the guys that we expected to lose kept it close,” Swink said. “We didn’t give up a whole lot of falls. Cort (Myers) wrestled an awesome match at heavyweight. That kid went out and beat the kid from Boiling Springs last night; so we were expecting to give up six points. That was fantastic.”
Waynesboro opened the night with a forfeiture at 160 pounds and took a 9-0 lead after Titus Mong held off Clayton Hetrick 8-5 in the 172-pound bout.
Next, Caden Shockey was part of a pivotal moment when he scored a takedown with 36 seconds left in his 189-pound bout against Rodney Yeager that gave Shockey a 2-1 win and a 12-0 lead for Waynesboro.
Big Spring’s Owen Hutchinson was dominating in the 215-pound match that ended with a first-period fall. Jay Roberts held on to decision Waynesboro’s Cort Myers 2-1 in the 285-pound contest, and the Bulldogs received a forfeit at 107 pounds to take a 15-12 lead.
The lead grew to 19-12 after Nikolas Bradley major decisioned Jawaun Ballard17-8.
Waynesboro’s Steven Howard was part of another key match much like Shockey’s bout in which Howard snapped an 8-8 tie with a takedown in the third period and a 10-8 decision against Lennon Osbaugh. Osbaugh scored on a four-point move in the second period to tie the match and the pressure was on Howard when he was called for stalling near the end of the period.
Howard scored what proved to be the winning points and rode out Osbaugh for the final minute of the bout to preserve the win.
“He toughed it out,” Swink said of Howard. “We need Steven to have a little more confidence in himself, more practice. He’s young, he’s only a freshman. He’s a quality wrestler. That was a tough match. I was proud of him. He did a really great job.”
Big Spring opened up a 25-15 lead after Cord Hetrick’s first-period pin in the 127-pound contest, setting up the climactic ending to a rainy night outside the WASHS gym.
“We got a couple of really big wins. We got that one from Caden Shockey there at the end. The Yeager boy is a quality wrestler. I think we wrestled with toughness; I saw some guys fight really hard to stay off their backs. We had a speech last night about if we want to win we have to stay off our backs.”
