The varsity wrestling team ended their recent losing streak with a dominating home win Jan. 23 against Northwood High School, 70-11. With this win, the team was able to get back to .500 with a 7-7 season record. After five straight team losses, senior captains Nick Taylor and Patrick Teixeira, winning by pin and decision in the meet, set a strong tone that the rest of team fed off.
Injuries to key players and a challenging schedule were the main causes of the team’s recent downturn.
“Our schedule got a lot harder and a lot of starters got injured,” said sophomore Elad Covaliu. “We had to move up some freshman to varsity that didn’t have a lot of experience.”
Injuries to starters like junior Jonathan Wolman and most recently Taylor, at the team’s last meet, created inconsistency with the lineup and the entire team. Because the lineup was literally changing from meet to meet depending on injuries and performances of alternates taking the place of starters, the team was not able to get into a flow, resulting in multiple uncharacteristic losses.
Throughout the entire losing streak, Taylor and Teixeira went unfazed, producing wins by either pin or decision. Covaliu continued his strong season with wins in the team’s last five meetings by pin and decision. Senior captain Michael Bouvet helped the team to maintain composure during the team’s rough patch, winning along with Covaliu and Teixeira by pin or decision.
The meet originally scheduled for tomorrow, Feb. 6 against Whitman and B-CC will be rescheduled to a later date due to weather conditions. The team hopes to take their most recent success in to their upcoming meets before the MCPS Championships at Blair High School on Feb. 19 and 20.
