Barrington grinds to regional title at Grant

Barrington does not do glamour.

In workmanlike fashion, the Broncos' wrestling team built a lead, slowly pulling away from the field before winning a regional trophy for the first time in three years Saturday afternoon inside Benedetti Fieldhouse in Fox Lake.

Barrington advanced nine athletes into the finals and won six times to finish with 222.5 points and outscore Lake Zurich (185.5) and McHenry (134.5) to capture the Grant regional title. That puts the Broncos into a dual-team sectional later this month against Deerfield.

"Our coaching staff has been preaching that it's a new season - everything we did before today was practice, and everyone comes in 0-0, and that's how all of us addressed this regional," said Barrington junior Markus Hartman.

"We won this thing because we're blessed to have such a great coaching staff, and a bunch of guys who continually work hard for themselves and each other and buy into what they've heard from us from Day 1," said Barrington coach Dave Udchik.

The past two seasons had ended with a thud for Barrington in the regional round. Last year, the Broncos finished 50 points behind eventual champ Grant, while two years ago, it was once again a bitter loss to the Bulldogs, this time by just 16 points.

It was a much different story this time for the Mid-Suburban West champs, whose title hopes were given a jump-start by Kai Conway (106, 30-7) and Tucker Priola (113, 20-16) who opened the final session with marvelous performances to set the tone. Barrington will send a total of 10 competitors to the individual sectional it hosts next weekend.

Not advancing stung for Lake Zurich.

"We really wanted to win this regional, really bad," said Lake Zurich senior Josh Dyer (220, 26-5) who was one of two Bears who collected an individual title. "You have to credit Barrington."

Dyer defeated Barrington's Alex Crook (32-9) by pin late in their match after falling behind in the early going.

"They have a great team," said Dyer, "and deserved to be champs. Now for our team, it's all about concentrating on ourselves at sectionals in order to get downstate."

Dyer's pin at 5:13 was his 100th victory of his career.

Teammate Maxx Wayne (29-9) won at 126 pounds after putting an exclamation point on a wonderful day of work which included a technical fall in his final against Cary-Grove junior Wally Marsh.

"I'm feeling very good, and right now I feel whoever I'm up against, I can beat," said the LZ senior, who will be joined by eight others at sectionals, including a quartet of second-place medalists: Nick Swanson (132, 22-6), George Gritsonis (145, 16-12), Nick DiMaggio (160, 25-14), Kyle Fleming (195, 25-5) and Mike Bertoia (heavyweight).

With 20 pins, Bertoia (20-3) entered as the No. 1 seed, but the LZ big man fell in his final with Geoff Cagel (31-7) of McHenry, 6-4. Fleming dropped a 3-1 thriller in OT to Crystal Lake South senior Vinny Fontanetta.

"I'm very proud of Vinny right now," said Crystal Lake South coach Ross Ryan. "His regional title came to him because of all of the hard work and his desire to get better. He and Shahyan (Malik) provided the type of leadership that a young team like ours needed this year."

Fontanetta rode out Fleming in the first overtime period. Then, after starting the next period down, Fontanetta executed a nicely played reversal to take the lead, which he safely secured by riding his opponent out.

Malik, who's won 35 times this season, got his biggest win of the year with a major decision in his sectional qualifying bout against Mark Lantz-Warner (18-11) of Grant.

The heart of the Barrington lineup once again was stellar, with Hartman (37-1) dominant for a second straight weekend at 145 and Jake Cysewski (37-8) following with a a relatively easy time of it at 152, capping his second straight championship with a pin over Hayden Hill (19-15) of Cary-Grove.

Junior Adam Pinter (120, 23-13) will be making his second straight sectional appearance, along with Hill, for the Trojans.

"This was the first stop in the postseason series," said Cysewski, who had a couple of heart-stopping thrillers last weekend at the MSL tournament.

Barrington's Dan Rasmussen rebounded from his second-place finish against Jaylen Shaw of Wheeling at 160 pounds last weekend by earning a championship with an 11-4 win over DiMaggio of Lake Zurich. In that contest, the Broncos junior broke through early and maintained an aggressive pace.

"The loss to Shaw really stung, so today I came out with the attitude of attack first and never stop," said Rasmussen (31-8).

Grant celebrated a victory from Spencer Welter (25-14) at 138. Also advancing for the Bulldogs were 120-pound runner-up Ethan Geist (28-16) and Tucker Rogan (26-18) at 126.

Welter was involved in a tense match with Barrington sophomore Luke Rasmussen (23-17), who appeared to take the lead with a takedown near the edge with 41 seconds remaining in regulation (5-3) only to see the lead erased following a long discussion between the two officials.

Once back in action, Welter, in full extension, kept both toes inside the arc to earn a takedown of his own before holding off Rasmussen 6-5.

"Whether or not that takedown of his was good or not, you can't control what the referee calls or does, so I didn't pay attention to any of that and just went about trying to win the match," said Welter, a junior.

Noah Castillo (25-5) and his teammate, Daniel McPherson (113, 29-12) advanced for Round Lake. Castillo advanced at 132 with a strong effort in his sectional-qualifying bout.

"I'm a senior, and I didn't want my season to end today," said Castillo, who pinned his way into his third-place match.

Dundee-Crown fans watched their top man, Chase Raap, win it all at 182 when a late reversal stunned top seed Jake Leske of McHenry (30-6) in the closing moments.

"The first time we met it was a boring, 1-0 final," Raap said. "Neither one of us did much of anything the first time we met, so obviously the plan was to open up and come out attacking."

Raap was a sectional qualifier last season and had 37 wins but fell 1 victory short of joining eventual state champion Christian Brunner in Champaign.

"This feels real good right now," said Raap, "but there's more work to do for next week."

Raap conceded a reversal to Leske to fall behind 6-5 with 44 seconds remaining, only to score the game-winner with 12.6 seconds left.

Gabriel Scales (113, 31-15) and heavyweight Isiah Ziegler (18-6) will join Raap at Barrington.

One of the more anticipated finals was at 170, where freshmen standout Jaden Glauser ran his record to a remarkable 38-0 after a 9-3 decision over Barrington junior Jake Meyer (31-9).

Glauser made the perfect start when he opened up a 4-1 advantage after one period, which grew when he got on the leg of Meyer and converted for a 6-2 lead entering the third period.

"He's slick on his feet," said Meyer of Glauser, "and with his sweeps and drags, I'm hoping and looking forward to meeting him next weekend at sectionals and in the final."

Barrington had another champion in junior Jarit Shinhoster (32-4), who grabbed top honors at 132.