Baymen Wrestling Gearing Up For Division II Dual-Meet Championships; Mariners Pick Up Two Victories

With both teams undefeated coming into the final regular-season dual meet, the Hampton Bays wrestling team hosted Port Jefferson on January 9 for the League VIII title.

The Baymen came in with a full head of steam, coming off of some key wins. But the Royals won the first seven matches, five of them by pin, to stun the Hampton Bays crowd and take a 39-0 lead. Nick Morea pinned Nick Kim 22 seconds into the second round of their 145-pound match to put the Baymen on the board. From that point forward Hampton Bays won five of the next seven matches, including pins by Alex Velasquez (152), Will Krivickas (170), Jesse Riscen (220) and Kevin Eras (285), but the lead the Royals built up early on in the match proved to be the deciding factor and they won, 49-36, and with it the League VIII title.

Earlier in the season, Hampton Bays was able to avoid getting pinned in dual meets to keep the score close enough and within striking distance. But that didn’t hold true last week.

“In the match against Center Moriches [earlier this season],” Hampton Bays head coach Mike Lloyd explained, “that was a little more clear what it was going to come down to, so we were very on point making sure that if someone was going to go out, and that they weren’t necessarily going to be able to win, that they could go out and mitigate the pin. Today, whether it’s being home, Senior Night, we have people that are maybe a bit more nervous, it affected us a little bit more.”

Lloyd said he expected at least a win or two in the lighter weights against Port Jeff, and if they weren’t wins he was expecting decisions, not pins.

“We were really looking for guys to step up and a lot of people did,” he added. “Whether it was a little bit of too much nerves or whatever, people made a few simple mistakes. They still wrestled hard, it was just a matter of being out of position in a few of the earlier matches.”

Despite the loss, Hampton Bays still qualified for the Section XI Division II Dual Meet Championship, which began on Wednesday. Information regarding that meet came out too late to appear in this article, but results can be found this week at 27east.com and in next week’s issue.

The Mariners won their first dual meet of the season, 48-39, at Babylon on January 9 to avoid a winless league season. It was a match of two halves, as Babylon won the first half of the match in the lighter weights and Southampton won the upper weights. Babylon won the first seven bouts and held a 39-0 advantage before Luis Tlapanco pinned James Bender in 1:45 to get the Mariners going. Billy Bockhaus (152), Ben Brown (182) and Anthony Medina (195) all pinned their opponents and Babylon forfeited the other matches, allowing Southampton (1-3 League VIII, 3-4 overall) to take the 48-39 victory.

Southampton hosted Westhampton Beach’s ‘B’ team in a non-league match on Friday and won, 45-42, thanks to Ben Brown’s 3-0 decision over Luke Magee, the final match of the night. Moises Molina (182) got the match started with a pin in 27 seconds, then Brad Bockhaus (220) kept it going with a 27-second pin, followed by a 43-second pin by Edgar Ramos-Urbano at 285 pounds. Alex Boyd and Billy Bockhaus also won their matches by pin.

Southampton also competed at the Copiague Tournament on Saturday. Billy Bockhaus placed second, Medina placed third and Ben Brown and Alex Boyd each placed fourth.