PREP WRESTLING ROUNDUP : Capistrano Valley Wins South Coast Title of Its Own

As a matter of fact, someone did teach Capistrano Valley wrestlers the beauty of sharing. But Thursday night’s South Coast League finals at El Toro High was hardly the time for benevolence.

Besides, they shared last year. San Clemente won the 1993 dual-meet league title, only to have the Cougars win the league meet, which resulted in a co-championship.

This season, Capistrano Valley won the regular season and needed to win the league finals to claim the championship by itself. The Cougars did, barely.

San Clemente made a valiant run, but the Cougars wrestled out of their minds to take the title, outscoring the Tritons, 185-175. Mission Viejo was third with 103 points

“Capistrano Valley was awesome tonight,” San Clemente Coach Mark Calentino said. “I mean, we had 13 kids place in the top four, we had five or six kids exceed their seeds and we had a lot of pins earlier in the day. When you do all that, and you still get beat, what are you going to do? Capistrano Valley deserves to be champion.”

Cougar Coach Joe Zeller said he wouldn’t have minded sharing the title, but “it’s nice to have it all to yourself, too.”

Individually, six Cougars won weight class titles, compared to San Clemente’s four. El Toro, Mission Viejo and Mater Dei picked up one divisional winner each.

For two of Capistrano Valley’s winners, juniors Mark Stephenson (135) and Scott McConnell, their first individual league titles are nice, but it’s the team victory that mattered most.

“This was a pulling together of the whole team,” said Stephenson, who won by a technical fall, 18-3, over San Clemente’s Justin Fallon. “Some of the guys who weren’t expected to do that well wrestled their hearts out. And it’s nice not to have to share it.”

Said McConnell, a 6-4 winner over El Toro’s Greg Banducci: “It feels great.”

Repeat league champions for Capistrano Valley were Alec Laidlaw (160), who pinned San Clemente’s Dylan Newman at 1:40, and Terry Tuzzolino (171), a 9-0 winner over El Toro’s Mike Pope. Other first-time winners for the Cougars were Scott Elliott (103) and Jose Pedraza (112). Second-seeded Elliott pinned top-seeded Triton Chris Sayer at 5:59, and top-seeded Pedraza was a 13-3 victor over Dana Hills’ Jeff Robinson.

In the Pacific Coast League:

Laguna Hills wins--The Hawks had wrestlers reach 12 of 13 finals, winning nine to take the league title with 197 points. It was the seventh consecutive league title for Laguna Hills, the third-ranked team in Orange County.

Jeff Greco (130 pounds) and his twin brother, Mike (135), won for Laguna Hills. Scott Morinoue had a pin in three minutes and heavyweight Mark Zolikoff won, 7-5, in overtime for Laguna Hills.