Batavia routs Geneva

Honor Nguyen staked the Geneva wrestling team to a promising start with a first-period fall Thursday against archrival Batavia.

But the remainder of the night belonged to the defending Upstate Eight River champion Bulldogs.

The 106-pound match would be the sole Geneva lead of the night.

Batavia sophomore Josh Fischer knotted the match with a second-period pin, and the Bulldogs would go on to capture 10 of the last 12 matches for a decisive 52-12 win in Batavia.

"I told our guys to score more points than them," Geneva coach Tom Chernich said. "Most of the guys didn't listen. There were a lot of hard-fought matches."

Unfortunately for the Vikings (6-6, 2-1), Batavia athletes prevailed in almost all of them.

"We were outgassing them in the third period," Batavia 160-pounder Nolan Adams said.

On a night marked by an inordinate number of reversals, Geneva could never find a solution to the Bulldogs' lower to upper weights.

The Vikings' Michael Donatelli was the lone Geneva wrestler to win between 126 and 195 pounds.

Batavia (4-6, 3-0) freshman Justin Major appropriated his surname to give the squad the lead for good with an 8-point margin of victory.

Donatelli brought the Vikings to within one, but Michael Doranski, Seth Winkle, Matt Sutherland and Curtis Paton all claimed simple decisions between 132 and 152 pounds for the Bulldogs.

"By and large, I was pretty happy with the guys' aggression in scoring the first takedown," Batavia coach Scott Bayer said.

The Batavia coach said the team surrendered too many "reversals and takedowns," but the Bulldogs were still able to prevail in all the close matches.

Bayer said "conditioning" was the difference for the Bulldogs in the closely contested matches.

"We tried to go for some big moves that got some of us in trouble," Batavia returning state qualifier Dylan Uzumecki said.

Batavia, after winning several tight matches, dispatched with pleasantries to conclude the one-sided match.

Adams, Nick Benson and Derek Nutley recorded consecutive pins for the Bulldogs to cap a 40-3 run.

"I was coming out strong," Adams said. "I put in a lot of hard work, and it paid off."

Alex Crowe finally ended the Vikings' drought with a 9-5 win at 195 pounds.

But Uzumecki and D'Andre Madews put the exclamation point on the match with pins at 220 and 285 pounds.

"The upper weights have some of the more experienced varsity wrestlers," Uzumecki said. "We got better during the middle weights."

"We have a very young team," Chernich said.

Batavia ended up winning 11 of the 14 matches, and the River Division will almost certainly come down to the Bulldogs' January date with St. Charles East.

The Bulldogs ended the Saints' three-year conference winning streak last year.