Wrestling Rams endure grueling week of matches

Competitions lead up to Port Chester's own Carlucci Tournament

December 14, 2023 at 12:22 a.m.

Rams junior lightweight Eduar Polanco, who just missed making the All-Section team last year, was named Port Chester's Most Outstanding Wrestler after going an undefeated 5-0 in Rye's prestigious Bernie Miller Tournament last Saturday (12/9). (Courtesy photo of Joe Facciola)

Port Chester's wrestling Rams tuned up for Rye's prestigious Bernie Miller Dual Meet tournament this past Saturday (12/9) by splitting a deuce at home earlier in the week. They lost close to John Jay/East Fishkill 49-24 last Tuesday (12/5) with the match in doubt right up until the very end and edged Roy C. Ketcham 39-36 Thursday (12/7) with both teams missing starters. But the Rams were close to full strength while finishing fifth out of 10 top tier teams in the Miller Tourney with junior lightweight Eduar Polanco—who just missed making the All-Section team last year—going an undefeated 5-0 to emerge as the Rams MOW (Most Outstanding Wrestler) while Port Chester went 3-2 on the day, beating Somers/North Salem (S/NS), Beacon and Scarsdale, losing to Clarkstown South 37-35 and Iona Prep, the eventual tournament winner, 54-24.

      

Along the way, a lot of good things happened.

The way it was

In the opening 72-6 Rams win over S/NS, for example, Anthony Flores, Erik Coyt, Fabian Avalos, Polanco, David Escobar, Emmanuel Diaz, Nicholas Pereira and Christian Ochoa won consecutive matches in a variety of weight classes, from 101 pounds to 152 pounds, before S/NS won their first match. The Rams then came right back with wins by Jonathan Tenesaca, Alejandro Velasquez, Jaden Barbour and Albert Poroj, climbing the weight ladder from 170 all the way up to 285.

In the Beacon match, the highlights in the 60-12 Rams win included more romps by Flores, Coyt, Avalos, Polanco and Escobar before Port Chester's first loss. This time around Ochoa picked up a win, the Rams dropped one, and then P.C. went on another roll with wins by Tenesaca, Velasquez, Barbour and Poroj. But the Rams lost to Clarkstown South by two points with the match coming down to close losses by Barbour and Poroj in the heavyweight division while the P.C. winners again included Flores, Coyt, Polanco, Pereira, Ochoa, Christopher Gonzalez and Tenesaca.

From Iona to Scarsdale

And so it went, from the Ram winners in the Iona Prep loss including Poroj, Flores, Coyt and Polanco to the P.C. winners in the 52-20 beatdown of Scarsdale including Coyt, Avalos, Polanco, Escobar, Pereira, Ochoa, Velasquez and Barbour.

All those names and Rams winners added up to a solid day's wrestling leading up to the Section One Dual Meet Championships Thursday (12/14) at Yorktown with the Rams drawing the Huskers, the hometown number one seed, in their opening match. After that, the Rams head into Port Chester's own prestigious Tony Carlucci/Eugene Miller Tournament Saturday (12/16) at 9 a.m. with that flurry of matches helping head coach Joe Facciola's resurgent team take a big step forward in their progress after being the school's only team to have their season canceled during the COVID pandemic because of the close contact nature of the sport.

But all that recent activity shows how far they have progressed on the comeback trail with Polanco leading the way as a legitimate Section One championship contender and eighth-grader Layla Builes, an international jiu jitsu age-group lightweight champion, emerging as a varsity sensation wrestling in both the male and female 100-pound weight class—a Port Chester first—after being out for more than a week due to illness. All of which means the next few days should provide a lot of thrills and spills for the wrestling Rams with the week that was a perfect tune-up for all that is to come.