Morgan Hill’s five wrestlers didn’t ask for whom the bell tolls, they just answered the call and all five are going to CCS thanks to top three finishes at the Blossom Valley Athletic League Finals.
Live Oak had two of its four wrestlers become league champions, while Sobrato’s lone wrestler earned the top prize.
“They worked hard. It’s for them. It’s not for me. It’s not for anyone else. They put in the work themselves. I can’t be more proud of them,” said first year coach Dean Nguyen.
The Bulldogs’ Brandon Lefore dominated the 162-pound class as he make his bid to return to state. He breezed through the first three rounds with pins then won the finals in a hard-fought 5-4 decision.
“I just went in there wrestling smart. I didn’t need to make any big moves or anything. A win’s a win at that point,” Lefore said.
He said he probably over ate during the day, with may have held him back a little bit in the match, but he muscled his way through for the win.
The match swung in the third period when his opponent was penalized for stalling.
Lefore opened the match against Leland with a take down in the first period, but was reversed to settler for a 2-2 tie after the opening round.
Lefore had a second takedown in the second and his opponent escaped to leave the score 4-3 after two periods.
When Lefore had the dominate position at the start of the third, his opponent began to utalize a passive strategy to prevent being flipped. It cost him a point for stalling, brining Lefore’s lead up to 5-3.
“His only defense to the top moves I was trying was to lay down there and just sit so the referee called him for a caution for stalling because he wasn’t working when I was working on him,” Lefore said.
It paid off when the Leland wrestler escaped near the end, but couldn’t score another point. Without that stall, the match would have gone to sudden death overtime.
Austin Langford for Live Oak swept his matches by way of pin, never going deeper than 36 seconds into the second period.
His teammate Morgan Smith had the most dramatic finish of the five when a desperation move to avoid being pinned worked so well, he pinned his opponent’s shoulders to the mat with 34 seconds left in the second period.
Smith said his opponent got him in a bear hug and he had just a short amount of time before the ref called the match, so he arched into a bridge and hooked the arms. Smith was able to ride that to a pin and a league championship.
“This was my first high school first place, I was ecstatic,” Smith said.
Smith was fighting a bug the entire week leading up to the tournament, but clung to advice from his dad to battle through.
“My dad told me this morning when I woke up, it was either make up or shut up and on the ride over, I did a really good job to get here and he told me ‘depth of 40 feet.’ That’s like a family saying for us,” Smith said.
Only one other school, Santa Teresa, had more than one league champion and it had brought nearly its entire team to the BVAL finals.
Live Oak’s other two wrestlers qualified for CCS after taking third in their respective weight classes.
Adam Mito at 147 pounds was mere seconds away from advancing to the finals.
He was up 6-5 when his opponent escaped with eight seconds left to force overtime.
In the overtime period, Mito took a shot that his opponent countered, scoring a take down to win 8-6.
That forced Mito into the consolation bracket, where he had little trouble advancing to the third-place bout with a pin 27 seconds into the second period.
In the consolation finals, Mito had to battle for two rounds before he took control in the third. He reversed Andres Mercado from Oak Grove and pinned him 53 seconds into the final period.
Live Oak’s final wrestler, Rovinn Salvador had one of the tougher routes to a CCS berth in the 162-pound bracket.
The unseeded senior earned a pair of decisions to advance to the semis where he had to face Lefore, losing by pin in the first round.
He then went to the consolation semis where he found himself trailing 4-2 after the first two rounds.
Salvador scored a take down at the end of the round to force overtime.
With 11 seconds left on the clock, Salvador scored another take down to win 6-4.
That was his last match, as his opponent in the third place round ran into his five-match limit, ceding third to Salvador.
Heading into Friday’s CCS tournament, Morgan Hill has three of its five wrestlers seeded.
“I might not have a team right at home, but having a bunch of other Morgan Hill kids with me is nice, I’ll be a lot more comfortable,” Lefore said. “But I know a lot of the other CCS wrestlers because of club wrestling. I enjoy CCS a lot seeing a lot of friends.”
