“Is the wrestling match still going on?” a young man emerging from East Hampton High School was asked by a sportswriter who’d arrived there late on Dec. 20 after having spent most of the afternoon working to meet the Christmas issue’s deadline.
“Yeah, it’s over,” he replied.
“Did we . . . win?” the late arrival asked, fully expecting the answer to be no, as has invariably been the case these past few years.
“They won,” he said.
“We . . . won?”
“Yeah. . . . The coaches are still in there, in the locker room.”
“A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy new year to all the world! Oh, glorious, glorious,” said the sportswriter as he approached the coaches, the veteran, Jim Stewart, and his new assistant, Ethan Mitchell, formerly of Westhampton Beach, taking leave of their wrestlers with pats on the back.
Yes, it was true, Coach Stewart said. The first East Hampton wrestling league meet win in five years, he thought. And it was accomplished with nine wrestlers in the lineup who had had no more than five weeks of practice, Mitchell pointed out.
The match, with West Babylon, began at 160 pounds. East Hampton’s George Mueller lost that one by a first-period pin. His teammate Edwin Espinoza evened things, winning by pin in 37 seconds at 170, after which Will Darrell, whose father, Trevor, once wrestled for Stewart, lost by a first-period pin at 182.
Again Bonac pulled even as Nick Lombardo, one of the nine newbies, pinned his man in 1 minute and 17 seconds at 195. Jose Calderon lost by pin at 220, but Sebastian Sanchez won by forfeit at 285, to tie the score at 18-18.
Robert Stewart, the coach’s son, won by forfeit also, at 99, East Hampton forfeited at 106, but Santi Maya’s 12-2 major decision of the visitors’ Bill Colloca at 113 treated the Bonackers to their first lead of the evening, at 28-24.
Cooper Ceva, another first-year wrestler, was pinned at 120, near the end of the first period, after which Austin Brown, a fellow first-year man who “wrestled great,” was pinned with nine seconds remaining in his match at 126, returning the lead to West Babylon, at 35-28.
Caleb Peralta, one of only two members on the team with experience — Maya being the other one — won by pin at 132, pulling East Hampton to within 1 point of a tie, but at 138, the visitors pulled ahead by 7 as the result of John Marin’s loss by pin near the end of the second period — Marin being another first-year wrestler, said Stewart, who was providing the blow-by-blow account.
The next match, at 145, with East Hampton trailing 41-34, proved to be the crucial one. Alex Vanegas won it by pin at 2:23, a victory that pulled the Bonackers to within 1 point again, at 40-41, and a subsequent forfeit by West Babylon to East Hampton’s 152-pounder, Brahian Usma, put East Hampton over the top, 46-41.
“It came down to Alex at 145,” said Stewart. “If he wins, we win, if he loses, we lose. . . . The kids were super excited; the crowd was too. Everyone was going crazy.”
“Ethan and I are excited too — it’s exciting to have wrestling come back. I finished last year with just five kids and two of them were injured. And now we’ve got 48, all working hard, all of them all in. They’re focusing, doing what we’ve been asking them to do, not only in the wrestling room, but when it comes to hydration, diet, and conditioning. All 48 of us, varsity and jayvee, practice as one team.”
The last league meet win before this one apparently occurred on Jan. 8, 2014, as East Hampton, then coached by Steve Tseperkas, topped Amityville 45-34, “thanks to four forfeits by the Warriors and to a clutch performance by a freshman, Ivan Guazhambo, at 106 pounds.”
And that win over Amityville reportedly was East Hampton’s “first league dual meet win in two years.”