Fox Lane finishes third at Section 1 championships

Clockwise from left, Piero DiNicola scores a reversal for Fox Lane. Maynor Argueta scores on his way to victory against Yorktown. Flavio DiNicola works from top for the Foxes. Photos by Jim MacLean

By JIM MACLEAN  

Sometimes you can work out the matchups in your favor, and sometimes you run up against a really strong team from top to bottom without many weaknesses.

Fox Lane had worked the matchups to score a pair of upset victories over the number four and number five seeds to earn a chance to compete in the Section 1 Division 1 dual-meet tournament final four on Dec. 18, but in the semifinals the Foxes ran up against No. 1-seed Yorktown and the Foxes suffered a 43-23 setback to the host Huskers.

Fox Lane bounced back with a convincing 47-18 victory over Rye to finish third overall. Not bad for a team that entered the tournament as the 12th seed, and the Foxes proved to be the toughest match of the day for Yorktown as the Huskers crushed Arlington in the finals by a score of 71-6 to win the title as Section 1 dual-meet champion.

“If you had told me before the season started that we would be here in the top three I’d take it,” admitted Fox Lane coach Anthony Rodrigues. “The Yorktown match went the way we thought it would go. We needed someone to win a match they weren’t supposed to win, but we didn’t get it. It was frustrating that our 103-pounder was out sick, but overall we did well. It was a good day, good hard wrestling is how you get better and that’s how I look at it. We’ll get better from what happened here today.”

Against Yorktown, Fox Lane got off to a good start as Maynor Argueta scored a dominant 20-5 victory by tech fall and Piero DiNicola followed with a 10-5 win to give the Foxes an 8-6 lead, but the Huskers reeled off four-straight wins to take control and build a 25-8 lead before Luke Ryan was able to stop the run with an 8-3 victory for the Foxes. Chris Bloom then scored a 7-4 win in overtime to cut the Yorktown lead down to 25-14. Andrew Brauning won his match by pin for the Foxes at 285 pounds to make it 31-20, and Flavio DiNicola won his match by a score of 7-1, but the Huskers were able to close out the victory and move on to the finals.

That put Fox Lane in the consolation final against Rye, and the Foxes looked pretty impressive for a 12th seed, winning 10 matches to pull away for the 47-18 win.

Brauning wasted no time pinning his opponent at 285 pounds in less than a minute, while Charlie Monroy rallied to also win by pin in the final minute of his match at 144 pounds.

Other impressive victories included wins by tech fall for Luke Ryan, Finn Guyder, and Flavio DiNicola. Piero DiNicola and Carmelo Cambereri each won by major decision, while Allan Asig and Steven Morales each won by decision, and Maynor Argueta won by forfeit.

“The team did pretty well compared to our ranking, we’ve got a lot of guys who are starting to see how good we can be,” said Argueta. “Coach A-Rod trains us hard and we showed some good effort today. Yorktown is a very good team and we did pretty well against them. We can’t wait to see how we can compete in the next few weeks in the tournaments and we all want to go far and give it all we’ve got.”

It was a long night with two dual-meets, back-to-back, but the Foxes were up for the challenge and turned in an impressive 4-1 record overall in the tournament with the only loss coming against the champions from Yorktown.

“We wrestled hard, we wrestled tough,” added Rodrigues. “Luke had two really good wins against two kids that placed in the section. There’s no time to rest, we come right back with a tournament on Saturday, then we get a couple of weeks off to get better and try to make a run. We’ll get everyone down to their weight and then you just have to go for it and whatever happens, will happen.”

Fox Lane will be busy after the holiday break as the Foxes were set for a dual-meet tournament at Edgemont on Tuesday, Jan. 6, and then the Hen Hud tournament Saturday, Jan. 10.