The WJ girls’ wrestling team traveled to Northeast High School to the inaugural Maryland in-season girls’ “Who’s #1?” tournament on Friday, Jan 10. The scheduled two-day event was shortened into one long night of matches because of snow delays.
Wildcats placed sixth out of the 44 schools that attended in the single elimination bracket-style tournament. Senior Maddox Zuniga placed third, with other placers for Wildcats including seniors Alex Mockel (fifth), Sophia Matos (fifth) and Madeline Barnett (seventh), juniors Sonia Pegoue (sixth) and Sophia Babayev, along with sophomore Abigiya Asefa (seventh).
A bracketed tournament involves a single elimination tournament, where after a loss, a wrestler is sent to a consolation match. A few of the girls were in round 32, then all of the team in round 16 with a strong streak, and round 8 where our wrestlers were starting to slip.
“It was a really hard tournament as it was some of the best girls in the state, but I think we did okay,” Pegoue said.
The girls were thrown back into the action the next day, Jan. 11. The girls were joined by the coed varsity lineup in a Division Tri-meet against Winston Churchill and Montgomery Blair High Schools.
“You only get so many opportunities to really go out and showcase what you’ve been working on,” head coach Brian Frantz said. “Getting an opportunity to actually go and compete against someone that’s not a WJ kid is exciting and self-motivating for (the wrestlers).”
During the first matchup, WJ competed against Blair and fell 35-33. While the Wildcats won more matches (winning eight and losing six), the bonus points and lost matches added up to Blair’s advantage. Those who won their matches were senior Sam Potter, juniors Daniel Gershon, Filippos Kakos, Itai Windmueller, Jordan Alexiev, Hrayr Semirjyan, sophomore Bamdad Hajati and freshman Erik Horwell.
The second match of the meet for the Cats was against the host school, Churchill, where the Cats fell 49-25. Wrestlers that led WJ with wins were sophomore Jay Resnik and Hajati, Kakos, Gershon and Potter.
“We always have a lot of really close matches with them (Churchill), and they’re a perennially really good team, so competing with them every year is always tough, and we try to bring our A-game when we wrestle them,” Frantz said.
The coed varsity team will get back to the action on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at Clarksburg High School at 7:15 p.m.
