Redman, Guillardo to represent Sobrato at State championship
San Jose – In the years to come Sobrato High School will no doubt earn its fair share of team and individual CCS championships. And while the future of the Bulldogs athletic programs has yet to be written, Saturday night at Overfelt High School, senior Genaro Redman recorded history.
At 10:03pm, Redman a junior at Sobrato, recorded history when he pinned Derek Milburn of Aptos 4:20 minutes into the match, clinching the school’s first-ever CCS title in the process.
“It feels pretty good right now. It really hasn’t completely sunk in just yet,” said Redman immediately following his CCS title win. “It’s starting to hit me now, now that you’re talking about it. But really during the match, and even before, it never really entered my mind.
“Honestly all I was thinking about was ‘I really want to pin this guy,'” Redman admitted. Redman never trailed in the match and led 2-1 at the time of his pin.
When asked why a victory by pin was so high on his wish list, Redman quickly responded, “Because he (Milburn) has beaten guys that I haven’t beaten so I felt like I had something to prove.”
And prove it he did.
But now, with a CCS title and a place in Sobrato history fixed firmly under his belt, Redman has his sights set on this weekend’s state tournament in Bakersfield.
“My workout regiment this week will be about the same. Except that I’ll work even harder,” Redman explained.
That, however, according to Redman’s head coach Phil Luna, has never been a problem with Redman.
“He’s one of the hardest working guys in practice, along with Moses Guillardo,” Luna bragged. “He really came through and wrestled tough.
“Let me tell you how hard a worker that kid is. He really wanted to wrestle at lighter weights but we as coaches thought that is best chance at victory was in the heavyweight class,” Luna explained. “So we totally and completely revamped his entire system and he worked his butt off to make it happen. Look at him now, he’s a beast.”
While it was Redman that took home the last gold medal of the individual matches, it was Gilroy that won the team competition setting a CCS record in the process. The Mustangs scored 274 _ points in the meet, breaking Independence’s record of 269 _ set back in 1996.
Gilroy had five wrestlers Nicolo Naranjo (112), Adin Duenas (135), Armando Gonzalez (140), Hunter Collins (171) and Andres Barragan (189) win individual titles as well and placed nine wrestlers in this weekend’s state meet.
Luna admitted that having a team like Gilroy to wrestle against in TCAL has also raised the bar for his wrestlers.
“Having a team like them to face really helps our wrestlers work harder,” Luna said. “Our top guys compete with their guys and even if we don’t win it’s a great learning experience.”
As a team the Sobrato Bulldogs placed 16th at the meet. Moses Guillardo (125-pounds) placed fourth at CCS and also qualified for the State championships this weekend.
Guillardo has battled through two severe injuries in two years and a bought of pneumonia earlier this season to qualify for the State meet.
The five Live Oak wrestlers that qualified for the CCS meet each won one of their three matches, but didn’t qualify for State.
“They did really, really good,” said Acorns’ coach Robert Fernandez. “They wrestled tough.”
Also of note on this historic day was Silver Creek junior Tina Linhsamout, who became the first-ever girl in CCS history to earn a medal. Her sixth place finish at 103 pounds qualified her for the state tournament.
But for Morgan Hill this day belonged to junior Genaro Redman.
“Genaro did it,” Luna exclaimed. “He’s the first-ever CCS title holder in the school’s history and nobody can ever take that away from him.”
No they can’t.
John Coscia is the sports editor of South Valley Newspapers and can be reached at 408-842-9858 or at jc*****@gi************.com
