By Mike Clark
The format was different, but the winner wasn’t.
In the first year of deciding the Public League boys wrestling champion with a dual-meet format, Lane rolled to a 50-25 win over Taft in the final on Jan. 25 at Curie.
It was the fourth consecutive city title and 25th overall for Lane. Until this year, the Public League champ was determined by team points scored in the individual tournament.
The Champions have bigger goals, but senior 157-pounder Nasser Hammouche was glad to check this off the to-do list.
“Winning city, it represents our overall growth as a program,” he said. “When I started out as a freshman, there (were) some really good guys in the lineup, like four or five. And the rest of the lineup had to really fill those gaps and get better over the years.
“It shows how far we’ve come to dominate the city tournament like this.”
Senior 132-pounder Alex Valentin also has seen the Champions trend upward.
“I think this is the best we’ve wrestled as a team in my career,” he said. “Last year, we had a couple heavy hitters and mostly, our team wasn’t as developed.
“But we took (in) a lot of camps in the offseason. We did a lot of practicing together and iron sharpens iron. Everyone came out sold this year.”
The dual-meet final started at 120 pounds and Taft opened an 11-0 lead with a pin from David Ruiz at 120 and a technical fall by Angel Rivera at 126.
Lane won the next seven bouts, all by pin or tech fall, to open a 39-11 lead.
Posting falls were Abbas Abdulamir in 1:32 at 138 pounds, Vernon Cole in 26 seconds at 165 and Jose Lagunas in 23 seconds at 175.
Earning tech falls were Valentin at 132, Cole Calace at 150 and Hammouche at 157.
Taft’s Josh Taylor ended the Lane run with a 17-16 decision at 190 and Evan Jocic picked up a forfeit at 215 to make it 39-20 Champions.
Lane then got a pin at 1:25 from Adrian Meza at 285 and a tech fall by Jeremiah Arroyo-McMullan at 106.
Taft’s Bernardo Roque won a tech fall at 113 for the final margin.
Valentin considered this good prep work for the individual finals scheduled for this weekend at De La Salle.
“I want to be a four-time city champ, the only four-time city champ at Lane,” he said. “I want to make history with that. So this is pretty meaningful and it’s a big step towards that goal.”
Lane coach Matt Yan agreed.
“We’re a CPS school, after all,” Yan said. “And all this hard work that we put in over the spring, summer and fall of the last three years, for the seniors, has paid off in four straight city team championships. Getting that fourth one is special because they’ve won every single year.”
Lane advanced by beating Goode 70-12 in the quarterfinals and Curie 70-6 in the semis. Taft defeated Crane 64-18 in the quarters and Ag. Science 58-21 in the semis. In the other quarterfinals, Ag. Science beat Perspectives 47-36 and Curie knocked off Roosevelt 70-12.
Ag. Science took home third place after beating Curie 46-36.
Photos by Jim Vincent/OSA
