Bonac Wrestling Places Second Again in 45th Annual Sprig Gardner Tournament

For the second year in a row, the East Hampton/Pierson/Bridgehampton/Ross wrestling team placed second at its 45th annual Sprig Gardner Tournament on Saturday. And what might make the showing more impressive, head coach Ethan Mitchell said, is that this year’s tournament was considerably more competitive.

Last year, Ward Melville won the tournament, followed by East Hampton, Bayport-Blue Point, Westhampton Beach, Hampton Bays, Southampton and Center Moriches. This year, with both Sachem North and Sachem East added to the mix, it made for a very competitive tournament. Sachem North wound up winning it all, followed by the Bonackers, Sachem East, Ward Melville, Bayport, Mount Sinai, Hampton Bays and Center Moriches.

Mitchell said he was “really stoked” with how the tournament went and how his own team fared. “The kids wrestled really hard,” he said, “really tough — very excited how well they all did.”

Unfortunately, Mitchell said, a nationwide server issue with the website trackwrestling.com, which hosted the results for the tournament, affected the tournament to the point where results had to be done with pencil and paper, thus slowing things down considerably. The end result was that some wrestleback matches didn’t get to take place, limiting the number of matches and placements for some wrestlers. But, still, the tournament was finished in a reasonable amount of time, Mitchell said.

When all was said and done, East Hampton had five finalists that included a pair of champions in Adam Beckwith (170 pounds) and Francesco Palombino (215). Beckwith’s day was impressive as he pinned all four of his opponents en route to being named Most Outstanding Wrestler. Palombino came into the tournament as a relatively unknown wrestler, having not won many matches last season. But Mitchell said he put a ton of work in during the offseason and its shown so far. Palombino had two byes into the semifinals, where he won a 2-1 decision over teammate Juan Espinoza before pinning Sachem East’s Ryan Lane in 2:10.

Bronco Campsey (101) lost a close match in the finals to place second. Juan Roque (124) lost his finals match in overtime to a state qualifier in Sachem East’s Mikey Tietjen. And Luke Castillo lost his finals match to a strong wrestler in Sachem North’s Joseph Marotta.

Other placewinners for Bonac included Espinoza, Jhojairo Contreras (190) and Alex Cabrera (160), who each placed third, and Josue Elias (131) and Aman Chugh (190), who placed fourth.

“The kids that have been putting the work in certainly excelled that day. I wasn’t surprised by that,” Mitchell said. “This year, we switched some teams to bring in some much tougher competition, and I think that’s how I was surprised in just how well we did overall and how everyone stepped up. Again, I’m not surprised by the kids who did well. A lot of them were in close matches throughout the tournament. A couple of them won from behind, or won close matches to make it to the finals. Those who lost, it wasn’t for a lack of toughness or conditioning, it was their lack of knowledge and experience, which is something we can work on.”

East Hampton has a nonleague dual meet scheduled for this Thursday, December 7, at 5:30 p.m., and then they’ll compete in the Doc Fallot Memorial Duals at Hampton Bays on Saturday. Mitchell said he’s looking forward to his team’s first dual meet of the season this week.

“Shoreham is always tough,” he said. “They have a lot of kids who have a lot of accolades, and the way you wrestle in a dual meet is different than how you wrestle in a tournament. So it’ll be nice to see how the kids do when you have your entire team behind you.”