High school wrestling: Amherst prevails over North Ridgeville, but Comets coach sees room for improvement

NORTH RIDGEVILLE — There were plenty of mixed emotions to spare Thursday night as Amherst came away with a 43-33 Southwestern Conference victory over North Ridgeville. The Comets picked up the dual meet win, but coach Vinnie Curiale felt there was plenty of room for improvement from his wrestlers. The Rangers took the loss, but coach Joel Melvin liked the way his young team competed against a perennial SWC power. "We really feel like forfeits won the match for them," Melvin said after his team surrendered 18 points at three weight classes without wrestling. "Our kids wrestled hard. Some mistakes that we need to fix, like keeping our head up and more explosiveness from the bottom." The fact that Amherst struggled while earning the victory apparently was not a new experience. "It's been like that all year," Curiale said. "We're getting to the point where our young guys who are wrestling at the bigger weights are kind of hitting the wall right now. That's expected from these freshmen. They're not used to wrestling this many matches and they're not used to wrestling grown men every week." One of the night's highlight matches came at 120 pounds with the score tied at 6. North Ridgeville's Evan Linguzinski battled his way back from a deep deficit to pin Aiden Santiago and give the Rangers a 12-6 lead. "(Linguzinski) is normally a JV wrestler, I put him in at 113 and bumped him to 120 ... and he came out and pinned his kid," Melvin said. "That was huge, awesome. Evan is a first-year wrestler, he comes to practice every day and works hard. He's actually a kid that goes to school at Elyria Catholic and wrestles for us because he lives in Ridgeville and they don't have a team. "We threw him in there, I told him it was his night to shine and he took full advantage of it." Amherst won the next two matches to regain the lead, then got pins from Zach Machesky at 138 and Brandon Bratovich at 145 to make it 25-12. "It was really nice seeing all the wins before mine," Bratovich said. "We wrestled pretty well. We worked hard. I get pumped up any time I go out there and see someone win." North Ridgeville's Shane Swindig stopped the run with a thrilling 13-12 win over Rich Tennant, then the Rangers got three straight pins from Shane Adams (160), Tyler Kranik (170) and Chris Douglas (182) to give their team a 33-25 advantage. "I believe that one time Tennant was (state) ranked, so for Shane to come in and beat him, I think Shane's right there as well," Melvin said. "Then Shane Adams, and Tyler Kranik and Chris Douglas ... bam, bam, bam ... I'd just sit down and they'd be pinning. That was huge." Clay Carpenter put a halt to North Ridgeville's run, and essentially won the dual meet, when he pinned Edward Powers IV at 195 pounds. Amherst's Nick Jackson (220) and Lavell Gibson (285) received forfeits. "We prepared up top to counter their run, by moving our 195 to 220 to get that forfeit and our 220 up to heavy," Curiale said. "We had to do that to get the win. They won five matches and we won five matches of the 10 matches that were wrestled. I wish it would have gone a little more our way, but that's how it goes. They looked like they were in great shape, they were going six minutes hard, and we were just going." Curiale said they are trying some things in the practice room to break the younger kids out of their funk, and the entire team has been dealing with illness. He also said those things shouldn't be an issue at this point of the season. "I don't want to make excuses," he said. "We need to come out and wrestle. We're making a lot of excuses and not getting things done. Hopefully we can put that behind us and just move forward." Contact Shaun Bennett at 329-7137 or sbennett@chroniclet.com. Like him on Facebook and follow him @ShaunBennettct on Twitter. Amherst 43, North Ridgeville 33 106 — Zach Orseno (NR) won by forfeit. 113 — Ayden Rivers (A) won by forfeit. 120 — Evan Linguzinski (NR) pinned Aiden Santiago, 4:23. 126 — Elijah Mendez (A) dec. Justin Sprungl, 10-3. 132 — Noah Mendez (A) maj. dec. Anthony Naso, 16-3. 138 — Zach Machesky (A) pinned Connor Patton, 4:28. 145 — Brandon Bratovich (A) pinned Tyler Fair, 3:08. 152 — Shane Swindig (NR) dec. Rich Tennant, 13-12. 160 — Shane Adams (NR) pinned Ray Robinson, 1:20. 170 — Tyler Kranick (NR) pinned Bishop Fryson, :48. 182 — Chris Douglas (NR) pinned Braden Carpenter, 1:08. 195 — Clay Carpenter (A) pinned Edward Powers IV, 1:34. 220 — Nick Jackson (A) won by forfeit. 285 — Lavell Gibson (A) won by forfeit.