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With the season more than half over and teams looking
toward the Southern California Regional and State
Championships, one of the keys to success is avoiding
unnecessary injuries. For the Cerritos College wrestling
team, the last thing they want to happen is for one
teammate to potentially injure another while facing each
other at a tournament. While at the Cuesta Tournament on
Saturday, the Falcons found it better to default out of
two championship matches than risk an injury. As a
result, the Falcons placed third at the tournament with
74 team points and trailed just Sierra College (89.5)
and Palomar College, who had 84 points.
Freshman
Paul Lyon
(Shepherd (MI) HS), the state’s top-rated
wrestler at 133 pounds, advanced to the championship
match at 141 pounds after defeating three opponents. In
the finals, he was faced with freshman teammate
Mike
Koehnlein (Marina HS), who also won three
matches. Falcon head coach
Donny
Garriott talked with his wrestlers and decided
that a coin flip was how they were going to decide who
would default out of the match. Koehnlien won the toss
and Lyon defaulted out of the match.
Sophomore
David Razo
(La Quinta HS), who advanced to the championship
match of 157 pounds after winning three consecutive
matches, chose to default out of the championship match
against Louie Desantis of Palomar College. Coming in
third place at 149 pounds was sophomore
Tony Ruiz
(Loara HS), who reached the semi-finals before
losing. He bounced back to post wins over Aris
Harutyunyen of West Valley College (8-2) and then beat
Willey Smithe, 5-3, of Bakersfield College.
At 285 pounds,
freshman
Juan
Enriquez (John Glenn HS) opened with two
straight wins before losing, 2-0 to Santa Ana’s Tyler
Porras. After a 3-1 win over Brandon Hamilton of
Sacramento City College, Enriquez was defeated, 6-4 by
Josh Newman of West Hills College for third place.
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