Wolfpack wrestling off to powerful start in preseason tournament

By Matt Pascarella

In a preseason tournament, the Windham/Gray New-Gloucester/Westbrook Wolfpack varsity wrestling team showed they are ready for the regular season as the team wrestled schools from all over the state in the Westlake Invitational on Saturday, Nov. 30 at Morse High School in Bath. The Wolfpack finished fourth out of 19 schools with a score of 137.

Windham freshman James Swan works to move his opponent
to his back on Saturday, Nov. 30 at Morse High School in
Bath early in the preseason prep wrestling Westlake
Invitational. PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA  

“Our team first round – amazing,” said Gray New-Gloucester senior Jameson Hart. “That was super exciting. It means that we are practicing right. We are at a good spot we just got to work harder and we’re going to be a threat this year.”

The Wolfpack secured multiple wins and Windham senior Ayden Cofone (126-weight class) won his finals match. Other tournament placers were Westbrook sophomore Cole Tanner (165) finished second, Windham freshman James Swan (106) finished third, Westbrook sophomore Sajjad Jumaah (138) finished fourth, Windham junior Junius Pope (190) also finished fourth.

“It always feels good to win even in ... tight matches where you got to dig deep and push the pace,” said Cofone. “That's my fourth time winning that tournament and it felt more competitive each time which is good. I’ll use this tournament to set the season and really push hard to win the tougher tournaments down the road and to work harder and learn; I'm focused on growing as a wrestler and getting ready to flip the switch to college wrestling.”

After a very successful quarterfinal round, all 14 Wolfpack wrestlers advanced.

In the quarterfinals, Jumaah had an incredible match against Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat had a big lead most of the match, but Jumaah was not going down without a fight. Toward the end, mere points separated them and Jumaah’s perseverance earned him the 17-16 victory.

“I went into the match confident and it’s not I have to wrestle the second seed kid – it’s I get to wrestle the second seed kid,” said Jumaah. “I got a pretty hard blow to my nose... during the match. I had to take some injury time as well because ... I couldn’t wrestle right. When I got set on top, I was like the team needs this; that set a fire in me and I just went, I wrestled hard. I took a deep breath, I relaxed myself, I didn’t think about the score ... I had to keep going after it because there was no way I was going out like that.”

In the quarterfinals, Hart (157) took on Mount Ararat and pinned his opponent in under a minute.

Cofone pinned his Gardiner opponent with a minute remaining in the quarterfinals. He won his finals match 5-2 against Oceanside.

Cofone said he saw a lot of great heart and growth from last season. He said they need to wrestle their matches and not their opponents while working on cardio to set the pace of the match.

Windham senior CK Kennedy (175) fought a very close match against Bonny Eagle where he made up points after being down. Kennedy left it all on the mat, but narrowly lost 11-10.

“We have been able to get a lot accomplished in practice because the kids are paying attention and working hard to improve their skills,” said varsity Wolfpack coach John Nicholas. “We also talked about what it takes to win a big tournament and how to prepare yourself for each round. Besides the first round, (that went well) we had many kids that were able to battle back after a loss and push themselves into the consolation finals. We need to continue to work on our conditioning and clean up on some of our technique. I think the future is bright for the Wolfpack. We have a solid core of veterans mixed with some talented newcomers. It may take a little while, but we should be right in the mix by the end of the season.” <