In a season full of ups and downs for both Solon girls and boys wrestling leading up to last Thursday night, the Spartans saw another low moment after being swept by rivals Mount Vernon on the Mustangs’ home turf. The boys held a firm lead that they let up and couldn’t steal back, and the girls struggled to grasp an individual win in the last half of their matchup.
Solon girls fall 59-15
Mount Vernon stole the first two matchups — the 105 and 110 bouts — and the Spartans claimed the next two with a major decision from Layla Knazze (115) and a first period pin by Tess Richards (120). The Mustangs claimed the 125 match, and an open victory for Alannah Mahoney brought the score to 17-15 in Mount Vernon’s favor.
The Spartans didn’t win another match for the rest of the night. From 17-15 to a final score of 53-17, the Mustangs logged seven pins and two open victories on the way to a 36-0 run, leaving no room for a Spartan comeback.
“It’s kind of one of those things when you’re forfeiting and giving 18 points away in every duel, hard to come back from that,” Solon girls head coach John Cooper said. “That’s something that they need to learn from those and kind of build off of the good that they are doing and just do some corrective action on these little mistakes that are kind of costing them in certain positions.”
Solon boys fall 37-28
Opposite of the girls, the Solon boys jumped out to a sizable lead early on. Anderson Osgood (106) and Jayden Steapp (126) secured pins in their matches, and Evan Gleason (113) secured the major decision for a 16-3 Spartan lead right away. Mount Vernon responded with a major decision and a tech fall to cut the lead to four, and Jadyn Bevans’ pin (144) pushed Solon’s lead back up to 10.
From there, it was all Mustangs, who won the next six matches to not only take the lead 24-22, but add another 13 points to it and go up 37-22. And as Lucas Feuerbach has done all season, he secured a pin in just 45 seconds, though the match was already out of reach and the Spartans suffered a nine-point defeat.
“That’s a good wrestling team, but there’s little things that we can clean up. That’s a winnable duel for the [Solon] wrestling team,” Solon head coach Aaron Hadenfeldt said. “We’ll come back and get together as a coaching staff and see what we need to work on as a team and individual.”