Before heading off into their respective Salt City Athletic Conference divisions for the next couple of months, the Fayetteville-Manlius and East Syracuse Minoa wrestling teams got a measure of each other.
This season-opening clash of two neighboring programs last Wednesday night had plenty of highlights on both ends, but when it was done the Hornets had defeated the Spartans 45-31.
When going head-to-head seven times, ESM won four of them, yet could not overcome having to forfeit five divisions, including each bout from 99 to 113 pounds.
Before that, the Spartans got two pins in the early going as Matt Lewis opened at 182 pounds and took 66 seconds to finish off Will Coley before Ameer Ladd, at 285 pounds, pinned Preston Koester early in the second period.
F-M already had three forfeits, and were about to get another, when Braden Florczyk took to the mat at 120 pounds and took less than two periods to earn a 17-2 technical fall over Donovan Marriott.
The last four bouts were contested, starting at 145 pounds, where the Hornets’ Justin Bedell got his own technical fall, 18-3, to beat Casey O’Donnell as Alex Dauksza (160 pounds) blanked Nick Modlewski 15-0.
Meanwhile, ESM got some points when Aslan Abdulla, at 152 pounds, pulled away from Ben Christopher 17-6 as Ali Abdulla (170 pounds) claimed the closest decision of the night, a 4-2 win over Sawyer Dereszynski.
As that went on, Jamesville-DeWitt-CBA, the defending Section III Class AA champions, opened with an impressive effort at West Genesee, putting away the Wildcats 64-16.
After Braeden Barcza opened at 138 pounds by pinning Eugene Belov in the last seconds, WG won the next two bouts, but J-D/CBA answered with 11 wins in the 12 remaining contests.
Alikhan Abdullayev got it going at 160 by pinning Cole Saxon with one second left. Shoh Albekov’s 6-4 win over Mike Sakros was followed by six consecutive falls.
Brandon Milham (182), James Richer (195 pounds), Adam Honis (220 pounds), Laith Abdel-Aziz (285), Jackson Thomas (99) and Willam BeSeth (106) got those pins, Richer the quickest in 62 seconds over Andrew Troiano.
David BeSeth, at 113, held off WG’s Jackson Taetsch 11-7 as, in the last two bouts, Ethan Wells (126 pounds) got a 17-2 technical fall over Gavin O’Neil and Tyler Kellison (132 pounds) took 64 seconds to pin Ejarian Burgin.
J-D/CBA and ESM were both at Saturday’s Morrisville-Eaton Duals. F-M, meanwhile, went to Cicero-North Syracuse for the Andersen Memorial Tournament, where it finished ninth in a 14-team field with 52.5 points.
Florczyk still prevailed at 120, though, pinning Luis Ortiz (Newark) and then getting past Ryan Kennedy (Windsor) 10-5 in the semifinals before a 16-0 technical fall over Canastota’s Evan Austerman in the title bout.
No other F-M wrestler had a top-four finish, though. Kyle Sykes, at 106, defeated his own teammate, Leo Pieples, 3-2 for fifth place, with Christopher sixth at 152 and Zach Henderson sixth at 285. Alex Dauksza (160) and Vedat Gokmen (220) had seventh-place finishes.
J-D/CBA and ESM both took part in the Morrisville-Eaton Duals, where J-D/CBA went 4-1, only taking a 40-28 defeat to Walton/Delhi, but winning a rematch with ESM while also taking out host M-E, Vernon-Verona-Sherrill and Cazenovia.
