SOUTH PARIS – The Mt. Ararat Eagles had just one week to prepare for Saturday’s Eastern Class A wrestling regionals and bounce back from a very disappointing showing in the KVAC’s.
One week was just about enough.
Mt. Ararat showed last week’s 10th place conference finish was more of a fluke than a setback by withstanding a stiff challenge from Oxford Hills and walking out of the Vikings’ home gym with the Eastern A title.
Leading by just a half-point heading into the finals, the Eagles rode wins by four out of eight finalists, including a split of six head-to-head matches with Oxford Hills, to finish with 158.5 points, 2.5 points ahead of the host Vikings.
“The whole team just did an incredible job,” said Mt. Ararat coach Erick Jensen. “In the finals, I was just hoping the kids would wrestle up to their potential, and all eight of them did. We had a tough KVAC tournament last week, and these kids were just hungry today.”
Consolation wins by Meghan Wormwood (103) and Craig Varney (112) pulled the Vikings within that half point heading to the championship round, but the Eagles ended the suspense pretty quickly. Theo Marshall (135) gave them some breathing room with a win over Brunswick’s Casey Littrell. Then Josh Stuart (140), Ben Cox (145) and Dustin Crocker (152) took consecutive decisions over their Viking opponents to build what turned out to be an insurmountable lead.
“It’s like anything, you get momentum or you don’t,” said Oxford Hills coach Mark Dolloff. “I’ve got to take my hat off to Mt. Ararat. They wrestled really well. They’re very aggressive and a well-coached team. My kids just didn’t come off the bottom when they needed to. We had a couple of close places where we could have pinned a couple of kids and we just didn’t nail down the pins. But I’m pretty proud of my kids.”
Oxford Hills finished strong and gained some measure of revenge with three straight decisions over Mt. Ararat grapplers by Tom Moulton (160), Jack Pike (171) and Keith Brown (189).
“After watching all the guys from our school, I figured I had to go out there and wrestle hard,” said Brown, who decisioned Mt. Ararat’s Chris Cram, 16-8. “When they don’t win, it sometimes makes you feel like you need to lead the team. But once you get out there, it’s nothing. I just focus on wrestling.”
Oxford Hills qualified nine wrestlers for next weekend’s state meet in Bangor. Adam Edgerton (140), Ben Stoodley (145), Brad Smith (152) and Dan McLean (215) posted second-place finishes.
Mt. Blue will send five wrestlers to Bangor. Nick White (130), Gary Begin (135) and Alex Johnson (171) collected consolation wins, while Aaron Forbes (112) was a runner-up. Sophomore Sam Webber (119) picked up his second regional title by pinning Morse’s Spencer Chipman with little time to spare, at 5:53.
“I was going to try to pin him because I pinned him once already earlier in the year and I beat him 10-1 at the KVACs,” said Webber, who won the 112 title at last year’s regionals. “I pinned all of my opponents today.”
Morse finished third in the team standings with 138 points, followed by Erskine (108.5) and Mt. Blue (75.5).
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