Two impressive performances don’t a season make, but the members of the Londonderry High School wrestling squad stepped away from their first two matches of the 2015-16 campaign last week with every reason to believe that they had themselves rolling in a great direction indeed.
The defending Division I champions got their dual-meet campaign started in superb fashion Wednesday, Dec. 9 by doubling up on the visiting Manchester Central Little Green in a 48-24 victory. And they followed up that strong bit of work with an extremely strong showing at the 2015 Blue Devil Classic at Salem High School three days later.
In the downing of Central, Londonderry weight class wins were registered by David Donnelly at 120 pounds (by fall), Ryan Cabezas in the 126-pound bout (fall), Tyler Byrd at 132 pounds (fall), Andrew Chase in the 138-pound match (fall), Sammy Achab at 145 pounds (6-4 decision), Alex Boucher at 160 (forfeit), 170-pound standout Mahdi Achab (6-2 decision), Ben Psaledas in the 182-pound bout (fall), and Tyler LeBlanc at 113 pounds (forfeit).
Then at the 13-team Blue Devil Classic held last Saturday, Dec. 12 the Lancers finished a great second overall as a crew and had Cabezas win his 126-pound weight class title, Byrd finish second in the 132-pound class, and LeBlanc, Donnelly, Chase, both Achab boys, Colin Reardon, and Psaledas also medal with third and fourth place finishes.
Concord claimed the team crown by scoring 221 points to win handily, with Londonderry a distant second (139.50) and Pinkerton’s Astros a mere three points behind the Lancers (136.50) in third.
Cabezas battled his way to the championship in his division by besting Connor Stadnicki of Concord by a 3-1 tally in the championship bout. But his teammate Byrd wound up getting bested by Pinkerton stalwart Shayne McCann on a fall in the 132-pound finals and ended up having to be satisfied with runner-up honors.
The LHS bunch had Donnelly, Chase, Reardon, and Mahdi Achab snare third place finishes, and LeBlanc, Sammy Achab, and Psaledas finish fourth.
The local contingent will host its annual Londonderry Holiday Tournament, an event which was formerly held at Bow High School for years, on Saturday, Dec. 19.