St. Charles East continues to dominate
Ben Anderson had the distinction of supplying the finishing touches for the St. Charles East wrestling team in the final match of its clean sweep Saturday afternoon at Marmion.
The Cadets, the five-time defending Class 3A regional champion with a double-digit number of individual state champions in less than the past decade, were the final obstacle to the Saints continuing their program-record-breaking streak to start a season.
But Anderson, a returning state qualifier for the Saints, only continued the trend for the St. Charles East victors against Marmion in Aurora.
The third period had barely begun when Anderson used a series of takedowns to finish off a 20-5 technical fall.
Marmion duplicated the seven wins St. Charles East totaled with the Anderson triumph at 120 pounds.
But the Saints outscored Marmion 20-1 in bonus points to run their season-opening winning streak in dual matches to 19 with a convincing 41-22 victory.
"It's hard to recover when they're scoring bonus points - and we're not," Marmion returning state qualifier Trevor Chumbly said.
"The entire week (coach Jason) Potter was preaching that you have to do your job," said Anderson, who did not have a match go the distance in extending his personal winning streak to 20 matches this season. "We knew (the Cadets) had some hammers, but we just wanted to battle."
St. Charles East had earlier manhandled Joliet Catholic, Bloomington and Deerfield by a collective score of 181-34.
"We pinned a lot of people today," Potter said. "We had to score bonus points. (Our athletes) were going to go headhunting."
Steven Dzados and Tommy Schroeder had back-to-back first-period falls for St. Charles East to give the Saints a never-to-be-lost 12-point lead over Marmion.
Wyatt Gundlach beat the third-period buzzer by five seconds to earn another pin for St. Charles East at 195 pounds; Addison Jennings and Justin Hull both earned forfeits for the Saints at 170 pounds and heavyweight.
There was additional motivation for St. Charles East.
"I worked my butt off," Gundlach said. "I didn't want to lose against Marmion. They take all of our kids through (the) SCN (feeder program) that our supposed to go to our school. We wanted this enough, so we took it."
The Saints scored the first 21 points and closed out Deerfield - fourth last year in Class 3A - 54-13 by scoring the final 27 points.
Anderson, Justin Benjamin (126 pounds), Niko Derain (138), Schroeder, Brock Donati (195) and Jalen Farmer (220) all had pins against Deerfield.
Marmion has to cope with four potential all-state wrestlers - Sean McKenna, Brad Gross, Peter Ferraro and Nathan Jimenez - currently being on the shelf with injuries.
"We know we can compete with the best teams out there," said Marmion junior Michael Jaffe, like Chumbly, undefeated on the day. "But we have four all-staters gone. Instead of getting 6 (points) for us, we're giving up six."