Holding up quite well, the Morrisville-Eaton wrestling team sent five competitors to the final round at last Saturday’s Section III Class B championship meet at Sherburne-Earlville.
By doing so, the Warriors accumulated 136.5 points and took fourth place in a 12-team field. Phoenix, the state’s top-ranked small-school team and Section III Dual Meet champion, won with 256 points as Holland Patent (182 points) held off South Jefferson (168.5 points) for the runner-up spot.
Of those five M-E wrestlers that got to title matches, only Ryan LeBlanc prevailed, at 160 pounds. LeBlanc moved his record to 34-2 this season by going to the championship round and, once there, pinning Tim Reedy (Marcellus) in just 33 seconds.
This came after LeBlanc earned a pin over Bob Bush (Altmar-Parish-Williamstown) and an 18-1 technical fall over Tyler Mann (Holland Patent) in the early rounds.
Alex Meyers came within inches of prevailing in 171 pounds. Meyers won his way to the finals by holding off Phoenix’s Austin Hayes 10-8 and, against South Jefferson’s Jordan Jerome, fought to the last second before taking a 6-5 defeat.
Elsewhere, Rourke Devlin (125 pounds), Cody Frost (135 pounds) and Mike Parker (285 pounds) all went through pins in their respective championship matches.
Devlin, who beat Phoenix’s Seth Allen 4-2 in the semifinal round, fell to Alex Petroff (Cazenovia) in the second period. Frost got past Dan Cleveland (Sherburne-Earlville) 10-3 before took a defeat to Mark Crisafulli (Phoenix) in that same second period, and Barker got pinned by Chris Pike (Sherburne-Earlville) after shutting out Holland Patent’s Glenn Garrett 5-0 in his semifinal match.
Devlin, Frost and Barker join LeBlanc and Meyers as qualifiers for this Saturday’s Section III Division II overall championships at Cicero-North Syracuse, with the winners there advancing to the March 8-9 state meet in Rochester.
Ethan Childs is going, too, after securing third place at 189 pounds by beating George Dobrovsky (Skaneateles) 6-3. Mike Hackney pinned Ben Chace (Homer) for fifth place at 145 pounds, while Barney Prince took sixth place at 96 pounds.
Earlier in the week, M-E had tuned up for the sectional meet by going to Whitesboro and registering a 45-17 victory.
After Whitesboro took the first two matches, Frost got M-E on the board at 140 pounds, routing Jeff Evanciew 17-3, and Jordan Doroshenko (145 pounds) followed up by pinning Mike Ferguson 41 seconds into the third period. This made up for Ethan Morley taking a tough 7-5 loss to Josh Evanciew in the 130-pound opener.
M-E would also take seven of the last eight matches, three of them forfeits to Meyers, Dalton Villnave (189 pounds) and Childs after LeBlanc took just 2:23 to register a 16-1 technical fall over David Olney.
Finishing on a roll, M-E had Austin Hirsch (112 pounds) beat Dan Parker 6-2, Darren Perry (119 pounds) pin Lynde Schultz midway through the third period and Devlin fight hard in a 3-1 win over Joe Carstenbrock.
