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Local wrestlers slug it out at Marmonte League championships
All five of the Musketeer grapplers entered took a firstplace award during last Saturday’s league tournament at Simi Valley High School. The Musketeer quintet taking first place were Reed Dadoune (142 pounds) Eric Bodjanac (154) Esteban Torres (173) David Johnson (191) and John Martinez (heavyweight). Bodjanac received the award as the league’s most valuable upperweight (147 pounds to heavyweight) wrestler. “I think this proves that while we may not have been the strongest dual team all year, we’ve got some of the strongest talent on our team and some of the biggest hearts,” Moorpark head coach Sean Burns said. “They really showed that. To have five guys in the finals, I was pleased and could not have asked for anything more, but to go five for five is just special.”
A pair of grapplers from the Agoura Chargers and Westlake Warriors, and one wrestler from the Calabasas Coyotes, rounded out the 14 first-place wrestlers. Individual champions were: Devin Conroy (132) and Austin Jesse (162) of Agoura, Arian Ghaffri (114) and Geoff Pizinger (147) of Westlake, and Calabasas’ Cameron Teitelman (127). Royal repeats as league champions The Highlanders were successful in defending their league title and anticipate being a major factor for the remainder of the postseason as the defending CIFSouthern Section Division V champions. First-year head coach Richard Carrillo, voted by his fellow coaches as the league Coach of the Year, said that taking the reins from his processor, Paul Mole, was a challenge.
Mole moved to Castle Rock, Colo., and is coaching at Ponderosa High, a wrestling program ranked in the top 15 in the nation, where he’s a freshman coach. He’s one of 15 coaches at Ponderosa. “He’s there with the younger kids and sort of has the pressure off,” Carrillo said. As Royal defends the Division V title, its coach believes the team has a good shot at repeating. Carrillo said he wanted to pace his wrestlers during the regular season so they’d be fresh for the team’s postseason run. “We haven’t wrestled two weekends in a row, hopefully to rest their bodies and get them excited,” said Carrillo, the former Royal JV coach. “Wrestling season can be pretty long and it’s tough on the body. We tried to give a few weeks off so that we could come in strong into the league championship.” Carrillo said he’s been trying to also develop the younger wrestlers. “We’ve got an awesome group of freshmen this year who are outstanding athletes and they’re really motivated and they really want to do a good job and just keep the Royal tradition alive right now,” he said. Dunn, one of Royal’s four to take first-place honors last Saturday, said he got hurt at the beginning of the season, but now he’s back to 100 percent. “I’ve started working more on being able to pin people,” he said. “Last year I won a lot of matches by a big score, but now I actually have started pinning a lot more people.” Dunn said that part of his training was learning the Gene Mills half Nelson. Regarding a repeat of the CIF title, Dunn said, “We have a team that could do it, but it will be tough. If we all wrestle well, we can do it.” Along with Rivera, two sophomores will be among those who bolster the Highlander team next season, Gerald Figueroa (105) and Sam Mestav (112). “We’re doing a lot to develop our younger guys, taking two JV teams to tournaments when we can. We’ve gone to a lot more JV and frosh-soph tournaments than we have in the past,” Carrillo said. In the past, Royal would only go to about two JV tournaments and one frosh-soph, but this year, the Highlanders went to four JV tournaments and the JV wrestlers are approaching 40 matches. “This hasn’t happened, ever as far as I know,” Carrillo said. “We’re trying to build from the lower ranks because we know we’re going to hit a spell here where we don’t have seniors coming in. So, we’re trying to get those guys ready.” Simi Valley anticipates strong 2006-07 With only one graduating senior, Simi Valley anticipates being very competitive next year. “If we can keep them together we’ll see if we can rise to the occasion and maybe give a run at Royal next year,” coach Guy Greene said. “They seem to be staffed with the JVs and they just wrestle real tough. I am proud of all these kids because we prepare the right way.” The coach said the team competes and takes direction, and that he’s been coaching for 31 years. He’s not looking at quitting anytime soon, Greene said. “I enjoy being with these kids,” Greene said. “I still enjoy getting up early on Friday or Saturday, getting out and taking a bunch of kids down somewhere and we see what we’ve got.” “We got a few trophies with the varsity and JVs this year and should do better next year. I feel we’ll have at least 13 varsity returners out of 14 positrons.” Junior Nathan Millett, heavyweight, said that after a slow start the Pioneers lost to Thousand Oaks. “That really hurt us a little bit,” he said. “We thought we had a chance. We thought we still had a chance. We had Royal. It just wasn’t meant to be this year, but we have a lot of returning guys. “We’re going to take the guys we have and make some noise.” Millett’s happy with the addition of new coaches. “This helps us a lot,” he said. The bigger weight wrestlers at Simi Valley are coached by Dave Madsen, the football coach. “He’s been helping us a lot,” Millett said of Madsen. “He won state twice in high school. We’ll do a lot of camps during the summer and get ready for next year.” The hardest part this year, Millett said, is “probably the weight difference. I am one of the lightest heavyweights at 224 (pounds) on average and everyone else is running 260, 275. “You don’t use that as an excuse, you just go out there and try your hardest, and I do. I work hard in practice and it shows on the mat,” Millett said. “Weighing less—it keeps me in balance. I don’t feel like a slug out there. As long as you have a little bit of strength, you’ll be all right.” In addition to Murphy and Millett, Simi Valley’s returnees will include junior Matt Bruno (160) and sophomore Dan Stoner (152). The CIF Division V matches are Saturday at Kaiser High in Fontana. |
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