Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley High School Wrestling team competed in the regional tournament last weekend at Western High School. After months of hard work and grueling competition, the boys were more than ready to show their efforts had paid off.
The Pirate team only took 10 wrestlers to regionals. They were unable to fill a full lineup this year. Despite missing 4 weights, they went into the second day of the tournament in 4th place overall as a team. After the day’s competition, eight wrestlers were still in the tournament and would return on day two.
Jorge Cervantes had a rough start to the day and dropped two matches. But he came back strong in his final match and beat A. Gomez from Desert Pines by the smallest of margins (4-3) to earn 5th place overall, thus qualifying him for state.
Zachary Anderson had a similar performance. He faced the two-time defending state champion in his first match Saturday and lost. He then lost his second match of the day putting him in a do-or-die situation for 5th. He was behind 9-4 in the second period and it wasn’t looking good. But with a demonstration of heart and determination, he turned his opponent on his back and pinned him to earn 5th place and qualify for state.
Gavin Henrie had his best tournament of the year. He lost his first match against Riley from Pahrump to put him into the consolation bracket. He beat Ellis from Del Sol 13-9 to put him into the consolation finals where he would face off against Moeai from Virgin Valley. Gavin had lost to Moeai twice during the regular season but was confident he could pull off the win. He wrestled with great control and ended up pulling off an extremely close 2-1 victory to earn 3rd place and qualify for state.
This performance was done despite the fact that Henrie had sustained a broken femur in football earlier in the school year and had missed the first part of the wrestling season to recover.
“We are very proud of Gavin’s progress this year,” said Assistant Coach Ryan Anderson. “He has worked extremely hard and made huge strides.”
Christian Riordan also wrestled his best tournament of the year. He pinned J. Moran of Desert Pines on day one to move into the semifinals where he would face a very tough Boulder City opponent.
Riordan refused to be denied despite a very strong effort from his opponent. The match went the full 6 minutes and Riordan came out with the 4-2 victory to put him in the finals.
Riordan faced a tough and confident Jalen Williams from Chaparral for his final match. “Williams is extremely strong and relies on upper body throws and strength to beat his opponents,” Anderson said. “But being a freshman, he wasn’t prepared for an equally strong and more fundamental wrestler.”
Riordan took an early lead and never let up. The score was 14-0 in the third period when Riordan put Williams on his back for the final time and pinned him to win the Regional Championship and represent the south as the number one seed in the state tournament.
Trevor Van Vliet entered the tournament with an extreme amount of confidence and momentum having won the Chaparral invitational and Enterprise, UT tournaments the previous two weeks.
He faced off against Stinson from Cheyenne on day one and pinned him in the second period to move on to the semifinals where he would meet Takahashi, a world class Judo competitor competing as a foreign exchange student for Boulder City High School. Van Vliet beat Takahashi 12-4 (major decision) to move on to the finals.
Van Vliet met Dillon Viera (also from Boulder City) in the finals. Despite holding two season wins over Viera, Van Vliet had experienced some difficulty in their previous matches and had actually been behind in points both times before pinning him. Prepared for Viera’s signature “slide by”, Van Vliet refused to tie up. Van Vliet ran the score up to 7-1 before pinning Viera in the second period to win the Regional Championship and also represent the south as the number one seed in the state tournament.
“We are very pleased as a coaching staff with how well all our boys wrestled last weekend,” Anderson said. “We dropped two places to 6th overall as a team (two places higher than last year’s finish) due to our inability to field a full lineup but the boys we did take with us wrestled extremely well. A 6th place team finish with only 10 wrestlers competing is pretty impressive.”
