Depth leads Jacobs to first regional title
ROCKFORD - Jacobs' win at the Class 3A Rockford East wrestling regional Saturday was truly a team effort.
The Golden Eagles had just one individual champion - Cody Ferencz at 120 pounds - but qualified nine wrestlers for sectionals while defeating local favorites Harlem and Hononegah for the team title.
Jacobs, in winning the program's first regional title, tallied 171 ½ points to edge the Huskies (160 ½). Hononegah took third with 157 points.
Huntley finished fifth, with Zach Spencer (106), Josh Stenger (113), and Ricky Vigil (132) winning individual titles.
Loren Strickland (160), Jack Golnick (195), and Carson Shoemaker (220), dropped their final matches to finish second for the Golden Eagles. Beau Harrier (113), Chad Dudych (126), Chris Dranka (132), Jacob Orth (152), and Michael Bujacz (182), all won their third-place matches to advance to next weekend's Barrington sectional. And all those placements kept scoring points for the Golden Eagles.
"We've got a solid team," said Jacobs coach Gary Conrad. "We don't have anyone who's elite, but we've just got hard workers. It's really a team win; everyone contributed."
The Golden Eagles got a few surprises in the lineup, such as freshman Strickland and Shoemaker making the finals.
Meanwhile, Ferencz won his first regional title as a senior, outscoring Hononegah's Aaron Leppert, 12-5.
"I had nothing to lose, it's my senior year," said Ferencz. "I worked hard all season, worked hard during (those) matches, had a good, hard warm-up and I knew that whatever happened, happened."
Jacobs won the Fox Valley Conference meet last week without a single individual champion. Ferencz got the Eagles on the board Saturday, but the win highlighted the team's depth.
Huntley also turned in a solid finish. The Red Raiders won the first two bouts of the finals, with Spencer and Stenger taking narrow decisions. Vigil won one of the day's most dramatic matches, edging DeKalb's Jordan Montgomery, 3-1, in overtime.
Vigil needed an injury timeout after landing hard outside the circle, but returned to quickly score a takedown and end the match.
"My back's been hurting me all season," he said. "I knew it was just a matter of time before I tweaked it. But it's my senior year and I tried to fight through it. I was thinking I've got 40 seconds on the clock, just get him out and that's what I did, I got the takedown."
The Red Raiders' Brandon Meyer and Dominic Swanson also advanced. Meyer lost a tough match at 152 to Harlem's Tanner Anthony, 7-2. Swanson fell in the heavyweight final to East's Jacob Heavlin.