Stevenson gets on a roll, doesn't stop in win over Lake Zurich
Leading rival Lake Zurich 10-7 after four matches, visiting Stevenson expected to be in a real dogfight with the Bears Friday night in North Suburban Conference wrestling action.
But Lake Zurich would be in for quite a surprise as the Patriots won every one of the final 10 bouts in what Stevenson assistant coach Dave Froehlich said had to be one of the highest scoring meets in school history.
The Patriots wound up scoring an incredible 55 unanswered points to close out the dual meet, including five pins, to post a lopsided 65-7 NSC victory over the short-handed and youthful Bears squad.
Starting the meet at 160 pounds, Stevenson took an early 4-0 lead when Ari Guzman captured an 11-3 major decision over John Clancy before 170-pounder Jacob Whiting followed Guzman with a pin for a 10-0 advantage.
Lake Zurich (5-6, 1-2) bounced back quickly as 182-pound senior Joey Mrazek's major decision over Alex Scott cut the gap to 10-4.
Then, in the best match of the night at 195, Lake Zurich's Ethan Medina outlasted Joe Hooge 6-4 in overtime to pull the Bears to within 10-7.
But it was an uphill struggle for Lake Zurich the rest of the way as a forfeit win by Michael Crawford at 220, a pin by junior Keegan Houlihan at 285, a pin by Alex Swidler at 106, and a forfeit win by Lorenzo Frezza (9-1 at 113) suddenly gave the Patriots a commanding 34-7 lead after eight bouts.
"Obviously to win in the way we did we're excited about that for sure, and we had some new guys in our lineup tonight who really contributed to the team and the program," said Stevenson coach Shane Cook, whose team is at the Lemont triple-dual meet on Saturday.
"It was a great win for Keegan in his first match of the season, and we were anxiously anticipating his return to the varsity lineup."
Cole Rhemrev (9-1 at 120 pounds) continued the onslaught for Stevenson with a 13-3 major decision over senior Logan Neurauter before teammate Randy Lu posted a 13-5 major decision over Scott Busse at 126 to keep the Pats' momentum going.
"We're just a very inexperienced team, we're kind of young, and we had three freshmen starters in our lineup tonight," said Lake Zurich coach Jake Jobst, whose team is at the Buffalo Grove tournament on Saturday.
"We graduated a lot of seniors last year so we're kind of rebuilding. We're going to take some lumps this year so it will be a learning curve for them, but the good news is that we do have a good freshman class to build on for the future."
A technical fall in exactly four minutes by Kei Yamato at 132 boosted the lead to 47-7 before pins by Ethan Klondar (138), Brett Max (145), and Arad Teragoudov (152) closed out the meet with a flurry to account for the final score.
"Obviously coach Jobst is a great coach, he's got a young team, and we know they will improve," added Cook. "So we always know that it's going to be a tough meet when we see them again down the road."