Barrington passes key test at Schaumburg
Just 24 hours after rolling over one of the best team in the Mid-Suburban League, Barrington needed just 90 minutes to accomplish the same thing at Schaumburg with a 42-24 victory on Friday.
In the process, the Broncos took one more large step toward a West Division title.
Barrington (13-0, 3-0), which had cruised past host Rolling Meadows 47-9 on Thursday night, was eager to make a stand against the reigning MSL champion Saxons (8-4, 1-2) and its terrific trio of Josh Marchok, Jon LaManna and Pat Felde. Schaumburg had been wrestling well of late, as evidenced by its 2-point loss (34-32) to state-ranked Hersey.
“We knew coming in that Barrington was going to be a really tough opponent for us, and would cause us a few problems throughout their lineup,” said Marchok (15-0), the state's top-ranked 215-pounder. “But we've been wrestling better of late, which we all hope will carry us into the postseason where we feel we will be competitive in the MSL tournament, then regionals.”
Marchok, LaManna and Felde gave the Saxons 15 points on the night with a pair of falls, and run their cumulative overall record to 51-4.
“We may have been a little flat coming out tonight, and there were probably a couple of matches in which we would have liked a better result,” said Barrington coach Al Strobl. “But we were able to get some important major and tech-falls along the way to help get ourselves a good win against one of our biggest rivals in the division.”
The visitors began to find their stride and break open a close match when the lower end of the lineup scored 20 unanswered points, including a fall from Matt Sheehy at 103, followed up by dominant performances from Adrian Gonzalez (112), Jared Parvinmehr (119) and Connor Maninna (20-4), whose technical fall at 4:33 over Stacy Smith culminated a terrific effort from the Broncos' 125-pounder.
The senior gave the visitors a commanding 39-21 lead when he used 3 near-falls to build a 13-0 cushion after 2 periods before an early takedown finished off his opponent for good.
Gonzalez (17-3), who began the season at 112 pounds and has bounced back and forth at 119 with Parvinmehr (22-3), who was the 112-pound champion at the prestigious Dvorak tournament. Gonzalez helped jump-start the Broncos' attack with his own technical fall at 3:33 before the Parvinmehr, a junior, methodically went over Neal Patel during his 16-4 major decision.
“Although we lost some great wrestlers from a year ago, this year's team has so much more depth, and guys who have put so much time in during the off-season, and in the room (like) Jared, and now you're seeing all of the hard work begin to pay off up and down our lineup,” said Broncos senior Dakota Wapotish (23-5), who helped take a bite out an early Saxons lead with a 12-1 major over Will Lang (12-3) at 145 pounds. That came one bout after Bryan Peterson opened the night with a pin at 3:40 to give the hosts a brief 6-0 lead.
Nick Shealy (152) and Cameron Thomson (160, 24-6) who leads the club in victories in his first season with the big club, put Barrington back in front (13-6) with back-to-back victories. Then Felde, LaManna and Marchok pushed the Saxons back on top one more time at 21-13.
“I was kind of hoping that we would have been wrestling at the start of the season like we are right now, but we've had to try and sort things out along the way and appear ready to get ourselves where we have to be in the final half of the season,” said Saxons coach Matt Gruszka.
“We've still got a long way to go, but we're building as each week comes and goes,” said Strobl, whose club will have the rest of the weekend off from competition.