Naperville Central stays perfect in DVC
Naperville Central 138-pounder Kyle Guttosch has seen it coming for some time. Now that it's here, he and his Redhawks teammates are really enjoying it.
The "it" can be described in a number of ways. Success and wins for sure. But it also can describe domination.
This year's veteran squad is unbeaten and has been dominant. Friday night the latest victim was Neuqua Valley, which fell 44-18 as the visiting Redhawks traveled across Naperville and used 5 pins and a technical fall to breeze to their ninth win without a defeat.
Guttosch failed to come away with a pin while "settling" for a technical fall of Wildcat Jake Kilacky and improving his record to 10-1 this season.
"We've been building up the past four years for this, since my freshman year," said Guttosch, who piled up 14 points in the first period before recording his second-period technical fall. "We started 4-5 freshmen on varsity and ever since we've been building up and this is the year we can do good things."
The good things on Friday included falls recorded by Tyler Driessens (113), Elrin Esporlas (132), Ryan Silva (145), Sean King (152) and Jackson Punzel (182). One of the Redhawks' top wrestlers, 195-pound Ben Cianchetti, didn't get a chance for a pin as he won via forfeit on Friday.
"It feels really great," Guttosch added. "We're taking it one meet at a time and we just want to dominate every opponent that we've gone against. We just keep winning and dominating every match. If we keep doing that we don't think there's anyone who can stop us."
King, like Guttosch and many of his teammates, has gotten off to a fast start in 2018. Friday's pin was his seventh already this season and the solid effort on the heels of last Friday's one-sided defeat of Naperville North has the squad 3-0 in the DuPage Valley Conference and oozing with confidence. King also credits his 145-pound teammate Silva with pushing him.
"It's a lot of off-season work and in season we're working hard. It's all paying off," said the 8-2 King. "Definitely seeing Silva go out there and pin guys is making me want to go out there and do the same. We got a lot of great kids and it's extremely exciting. Going out there and beating Naperville North 71-3 was great."
For the Wildcats, Friday's tough match came one night after a loss to another state power - Montini - and dropped the hosts to 7-6 on the year, 1-1 in the DVC.
Heavyweight Roberto Pena stayed hot this season, improving to 12-1 with a pin that gave his team a short-lived 6-4 lead on Friday. Neuqua 170-pounder Jacob Boumans also recorded a pin, improving the state-ranked grappler's mark to 13-0 this season.
"There's always room for improvement, but right now I feel like I'm in a good spot to make those improvements," said Boumans, whose first-period pin had closed the Wildcats' deficit to 38-18 before Punzel closed out the meet with a pin for the Redhawks. "We just need to learn in practice and in matches to fight more. We have a lot of talent and potential, we just need to fight more."