Bosco's win at 215 leads Long Beach victory
Long Beach's Mark Raghunandan pins MacArthur's Justin Perez in the 103-pound match in the Nassau high school wrestling match. (Jan. 19, 2011) Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Nassau's balance of power might not have shifted in a significant way, but Long Beach wrestling made a statement.
After building a sizable early lead and almost giving it away, Long Beach defeated MacArthur, 36-28, Wednesday night in a Nassau Conference 2A dual meet. Down one point with two matches to go, 215-pounder Joe Bosco's come-from behind decision helped the Marines pull it out.
"Early the match hearing their crowd was making me so mad," Bosco said. "All that anger was building up, and it came out on the mat."
The Marines were without 145-pound ace Dylan Palacio and 152-pounder Adam DeJesus, both of whom were nursing injuries. This moved regular 140-pounder Nick Khoury to Palacio's spot.
Long Beach's Steven Sewkumar and the Generals' Justin Cooksey opened the meet at 96 pounds and set the tone for a back-and-forth dual.
Sewkumar controlled the early action, building a 2-1 first-period lead before Cooksey tied in the second. After Sewkumar took a 3-2 lead, Cooksey's failed two-point takedown in the waning seconds gave Long Beach the early advantage.
The Marines pressed their advantage in the lighter weight-classes, as consecutive pins from Mark Raghunandan and Matt Gray at 112 at 119 gave them an 18-0 lead. At 125, natural 119-pounder Oral Allen moved up and took an 8-6 overtime win over MacArthur's Rob Bennett.
The Generals did not tally their first points until Chris Perez's pin at 130. Perez's win initiated the MacArthur comeback, as their depth in the higher weights, coupled with Long Beach's injuries, helped narrow the deficit.
Angelo Rella followed Perez in a spirited 10-1 major decision win over Edisson Tigre-Borja at 135. Tigre-Borja held a 1-0 lead, courtesy of a penalty point, after two periods. Despite multiple injury timeouts and referee warnings, Rella nearly earned the win and narrowed the Generals' deficit to 11.
MacArthur wrestled from behind all evening, and by the time the match hit 160, the Marines were clinging to a six-point lead. But Marvin McMoore pushed the lead to 27-18 with a 13-7 decision over Ryan Donahue.
After a major decision at 171 cut the deficit to five, MacArthur took its first lead of the match on Joe Cataldo's pin at 189. Cataldo, normally a 160-pounder, weighed in at 171 and moved up another weight class.
