Wrestling teams from Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse would go head-to-head Wednesday night, each of them having gone through plenty of tournament work in the weeks leading up to it.
In fact, the Warriors and Northstars were together on Dec. 27-28 for the Kenneth Haines Memorial Tournament at SUNY-Oswego.
There, Liverpool, with 73.5 points, finished 11th in a 24-team field, with C-NS close behind as it got 65 points for 14th place. Fulton, who sits atop the state Large School rankings, won with 273 points.
Hamier Williams-Borges gave the Warriors a victory at 195 pounds. In the semifinals, Williams-Borges beat Fulton’s Shane Goutermout 6-2, leading to a final where he held off Camden’s Sean O’Brien 7-4.
Elsewhere for Liverpool, Dom Ianno got fourth place at 145 pounds, with J.J. Guindy getting sixth place at 285 pounds, two spots ahead of teammate Izayiah Haynes.
C-NS had Adam Rush get to the 220-pound semifinals before he lost to Auburn’s Keyshin Cooper. But Rush recovered to finish third when he won the consolation bracket final 9-1 over Oswego High’s Alfonso Alonso.
No other Northstars wrestler claimed a top-four spot, but Dan Sweeney, at 113 pounds, topped Niagara-Wheatfield’s Tremell Mathews 5-3 for fifth place as Adam Brown was sixth at 145.
At 99 pounds, Anthony Ciciarelli got to seventh place when he edged Gouverneur’s Hunter Mashaw 7-5, just ahead of the eighth-place from Chris Mehlek at 182 pounds.
Liverpool then went to Saturday’s Port Byron Mid-Winter Classic and conquered the rest of the 15-team field, winning that event by earning 211 points, just ahead of South Jefferson/Sandy Creek’s second-place total of 194 points.
Williams-Borges had a first-place finish, as did Chris Ianno and Jeremy Ianno. Jacob Ianno and J.J. Guindy both had second-place efforts as Haynes, Paul Marquis and J.J. Paulson each finished third. Dom Ianno had a fourth-place finish.
As for C-NS, it would go to Canastota’s Fallen Heroes Tournament and earned fourth place out of 13 teams with 155 points, Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA prevailing with 197 points.
Rush won at 220, pinning Batavia’s Hunter Schramm in 2:06 in the finals, as Anthony Ciciarelli finished second at 99 and Brown made it to the finals at 145 before a defeat to Phoenix’s Holt Reed.
Sweeney was third at 113 and had to beat his own teammate, Harrison Portorsnok, 3-1 in the consolation bracket final.
Anthony Ciciarelli was third at 138, pinning Baldwinsville’s Jaden Prince in 3:58 for that spot, and Devin Southworth got third place at 152 pounds with a pin over Hannibal’s Dan Przepiora. Kevin Mossow was sixth at 99, matching Eric Salenski at 120 and Chris Mehlek at 170.
C-NS would immediately follow the Liverpool meet with one Thursday against Oswego High as the Warriors venture to Saturday’s Cazenovia Invitational.
