DEWITT – Though the Baldwinsville boys wrestling team finished third in last Saturday’s Section III Class AA championships at Jamesville-DeWitt High School, no one had a better individual performance than the Bees’ Brennan Kline.
It was Kline snaring Most Outstanding Wrestler honors on his way to the 108-pound title, part of a clean sweep of the lighter weight classes as Zach Boudreau (101 pounds) and Cael Bruce (116 pounds) won, too, as did Davian Longo at 160 pounds.
Kline got going with a 40-second pin of Landon Bunyea (Liverpool) in the quarterfinals, after which he pinned Elliott Olech (Fayetteville-Manlius) in the second period of the semifinal.
Finally, in the title bout against New Hartford’s Jacob Hurd, Kline ignored Hurd’s strong 35-5 record going into the meet and, in the final seconds, pinned Hurd to move his season record to 32-2.
Meanwhile, Bruce improved to 40-1 rolling to victory as he pinned Tyree Sharpe (Syracuse) in 74 seconds and got a technical fall over Sajad Amirzada (Liverpool) to reach the final and, once there, needed just 72 seconds to pin Amirzada’s teammate, Aiden Adams-Bovenzi.
Boudreau was 39-2 after his sectional victory, beating Cicero-North Syracuse’s Grady Ellsworth 14-7 in the semifinals and pinning West Genesee’s Aiden Wright late in the first period of their title bout.
Longo got a pin of C-NS’s Derek Eells in 3:38 and blanked Syracuse’s Jeffrey Petties 8-0 before a final where he got another pin in 2:23 over Rome Free Academy’s Chad Tennant, his 38th win of the season against just six defeats.
Overall, B’ville’s total of 170.5 points trailed the winning 234.5 of West Genesee and 191.5 of C-NS, with six Bees in total reaching the championship round.
At 152 pounds, Nathan Cali edged WG’s Ali Abumustafa 4-2 in the semifinals but fell to C-NS’s Kennedy Thomas in the finals, while Scottie Warner (138 pounds) won his semifinal 6-1 over Lantz Herrera (Liverpool) only to fall to New Hartford’s Victor Petronella 11-3 a round later.
Brendan Fredenburg had the Bees’ other top-four finish, a fourth at 145 pounds, while Cameron Sullivan got to sixth place at 152 pounds and joined his B’ville teammates in advancing to this Saturday’s sectional Division I state qualifier at SRC Arena.
