Big Red tops Brooke, Weir High in tri
Area teams trying to find their best with OVAC tourney looming
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WELLSBURG -- With the calendar now reading January and the OVAC tournament looming, area teams are looking to find their form.
Wednesday night, three area teams -- host Brooke, Big Red and Weir High -- were in such a position battling one another. While Steubenville left the Brooke Wellness Center with a pair of dual wins and perhaps feeling the best, all three were left with reasons for optimism as the season works toward its most important events.
Big Red, a perennial threat when the trophies are on the line, claimed a pair of dual victories, topping the Red Riders 61-13 in the opening dual of the night before taking a 63-12 triumph over the Bruins.
"I thought we wrestled pretty well," Big Red head coach Lucas Huffman said. "These types of duals are really important, especially when it comes to OVAC seeding. We want to be seeded as high as we can, and we need to wrestle these OVAC schools to get that done.
"It's great to see the local competition, if we can I like to stay around here and wrestle the local teams."
Savier Faulks (150 pounds) and Kail Simmons (157 pounds) claimed back-to-back pins against the Red Riders, Spenser Ostovich earned a pin at 215, then, against the Bruins, Big Red took five-straight matches that were contested on the mat by pinfall with Ethan Stimpert (120), Charles Abbott (126), Kaiden Minella (132) and Hakim Edwards (144) putting Steubenville well in control and on their way to a sweep of the night.
"Weir High didn't have a full line up, but the kids that did go out there wrestled us hard, which is great. Same with Brooke, their kids went out and battled us," Huffman said. "That is what we need right now.
"Overall, the season has not gone bad, we've had some injuries and dealt with some sickness … but we're coming together and coming together at the right time."
Brooke, though, bounced back against the Red Riders in the nightcap with Xander Eltringham (132) and Garrett Moore (165) taking pins in a 42-33 victory.
"It feels pretty good, Big Red is a tough team and our effort was there in the Big Red match, and Weir High, it's always good to beat a rival," Brooke head coach Doug Sizemore said. "It was our senior night and our senior, Xander, got a win. The kids worked hard from start to finish, I can't complain."
Joseph Rea (106) also earned a pin against Big Red.
"OVACs are two weeks out so we have to take advantage of every opportunity we can get (to face OVAC teams)," Sizemore said. "Now that we're entering into tournament season, matches like this will help us down the road and I'm looking forward to it.
"We set a goal at the beginning of the year of climbing the mountain so to speak, and we're getting up the mountain slowly but surely."
Despite dropping both duals on the night, Weir High coach Tom Taylor was happy with the improvement his young team has shown -- though he knows it will need to improve more as the season keeps progressing.
"I was real pleased, it showed some progress for us," Taylor said. "We're real young, and every week we're trying to work on getting better. We wrestled (Dec. 28) in Grafton and (Wednesday) I felt like we wrestled better. I felt like we improved and I'm real happy with that."
Shawn Young (144) earned pins in both duals, while Alias Pugh (215) and Brock Hebb (285) won by pin in the heavyweight portion of the dual against the Bruins.
"If you want to reach your goals, which are OVACs and regionals, you better be improving every time on the mat," Taylor said. "Where we are now isn't good enough to do those things, so that's why I'm pleased to see improvement and I hope we keep seeing. it"