The big story this past weekend in high school wrestling was the performance that Buchanan High School put together in winning a team title at the Doc Buchanan in Clovis, Calif.

With five wrestlers in the finals, the Bears were the only team with multiple individual champions — Paul Ruiz at 116 pounds, Ashton Besmer at 135, and Leo Contino at 160. Buchanan had six total placers and scored 205 team points to win the team title.

With the impressive performance at a tournament that featured six top-20 teams in the country, Buchanan jumped from #12 to #6 in the newest Flo 40 Team Rankings.

“The end result was really good. It’s extremely tough now with the way it’s gone with people bringing less and less full teams (to Doc B),” said Buchanan coach Troy Tirapelle in a phone interview Monday evening. “You’re getting a lot of individual studs from in and outside of California. In most weights, if not all, it’s tougher than our state tournament anymore.”

In their five finals matches, Buchanan faced three opponents from out of state. An unranked Ashton Besmer upset SLAM Academy’s #7 Manuel Saldate out of Nevada 8-5 at 135 pounds. At 160, Buchanan’s #16 Leo Contino took out another Slam Academy guy, Gabriel Delgado, 4-0. Buchanan took a finals loss at 123 when Rocklin Zinkin fell to #4 Landon Sidun out of Norwin in Pennsylvania by 5-3 decision.

At 116, unranked freshman Ruiz knocked off #4 Henry Aslikyan of Birmingham, a California state champion last year at 106 pounds. After Ruiz took an early lead, Aslikyan closed the gap and tied the match at 8-8, sending things to overtime. After a scoreless sudden victory period, the two went into tiebreakers where Ruiz prevailed 9-8.

“I know there’s a lot of potential, but until you do it, it’s not real,” Tirapelle said of Ruiz. “You would always think that the guy who’s been there and done that as compared to a freshman, eventually the freshman is going to make a freshman mistake — whether it’s mental or physical. To not do that is a testament that he has the ability to win state.”

One of the most anticipated matches of the night happened at 147, where Buchanan’s #4 Joe Toscano took on #2 Nikade Zinkin from just down the road at Clovis. This is the third meeting between these two in just a couple months. They wrestled at both Super 32 and the Zinkin Classic recently, splitting those matches.

In the Doc B final, Zinkin got the win over Toscano 7-5 in what could be a preview of this year’s California state final.

“I’m as competitive as anyone and I want to win everything, but the only one that anyone remembers is that one at the end,” Tirapelle said. “It’s all about growing and getting better. We’ll have to figure out the things we were doing wrong. Hopefully we feel good and get the one that kind of stays up on the wall forever.”

The final placer for Buchanan may have had the most impressive tournament of all. At 153 pounds, Ivan Arias finished third with his only loss an early 9-3 decision to #1 Daniel Zepeda. Arias went on to win four matches on the backside.

“This year, he’s really started to take off because he’s always had ability, but he’s kind of finally hit that mental maturity level to be able to understand what we’re trying to do and listen a little more,” Tirapelle said of Arias. “I was really happy that he could showcase that ‘Hey, I’m here and I belong.’”

For a team that’s usually known for its depth up and down the lineup, Tirapelle admits that the build of this year’s lineup isn’t what he’s used to.

“This year we kind of have a little bit different of a team than I’m used to having, so it kind of worked toward that advantage, meaning we have a lot of top-end kids,” Tirapelle said. “We always have depth and we pride ourselves on our program, and I feel like we’re a little differently made this year than we’ve been. We have to figure out how to score points in the other spots. We have a bunch of real good kids, and they wrestled well in matches that they could win, and we won most of them.”

Now in his 14th season at Buchanan, Tirapelle and his Bears had won seven straight California team titles until last year when they finished second behind Poway. Before Tirapelle arrived, Buchanan had only won one team title — in 2006.

After a “down” year, Tirapelle said his team and his staff are reemphasizing the little things like responsibility, structure and discipline. The wrestling is good, but they’ve shored up some “outside things” that led to a disappointing year.

“I think nobody wants to be the one that dropped the ball. I don’t think we did anything bad, but I don’t think we were maybe as good as we could have been, and maybe that through a little bit of complacency,” Tirapelle said. “Winning kind of happens because of all the other things you do that are hard behind closed doors. Everyone just sees the paper score instead of all the work put into it.

“What happened on the coaching level, and I’ll take the majority, if not all the blame, we’ve had kids (in the past) that would hold not only themselves accountable but each other accountable, and last year was the first year where it didn’t work to the same level I’d say.”

Finishing second behind Buchanan was #9 St. John Bosco with 174 points. Clovis moved up three spots to #16 in the country with its third-place finish (141 points), while Poway dropped 10 spots to #18 with a fourth-place finish (138 points). Moving down two spots was #19 Gilroy after finishing fifth with 136 points.

St. John Bosco didn’t have a champion but placed nine on the podium, showcasing its depth up and down the lineup. Poway was led by 215-pound champion #2 Angelo Posada who bonused his way through the tournament.

Clovis had one champion with Nikade Zinkin and the second-most podium finishers with seven. Gilroy had five podium finishers, including Zepeda who beat #7 Noah Nininger of Staunton River in Virginia 4-1 in the final.

Bishop McCort Narrowly Wins Powerade

It was second-ranked Bishop McCort that solidified its standing as a top team by winning a Powerade team title in late December. It was another huge tournament with a host of ranked teams — six of the top eight in the country were there competing.

In the end, the team title came down to the final match when McCort’s newly-minted #1 Melvin Miller defeated then-#1 Alessio Perentin of Delbarton 4-2 in the 160-pound final. McCort had three champions with #1 Jax Forrest and #1 Bo Bassett also winning their brackets.

Bishop McCort won Powerade with 217 team points, while #3 Lake Highland Prep finished second with 211. #5 Delbarton out of New Jersey finished third with 195.5 points, #7 Malvern Prep took fourth with 174, and #8 St. Edward’s placed fifth with 154.5 points. Finishing sixth was #4 Wyoming Seminary. The Blue Knights were down three nationally ranked starters and finished with 151 points.

Lake Highland Prep also had three champions — #9 Jayce Paridon at 139, #6 Robert Kucharczk at 189, and #7 Jacob Levy at 285. Delbarton led the field with eight placers, including champions #2 Jayden James at 152 and #5 Cameron Sontz at 114.

Along with Bassett and Forrest, Wyoming Seminary’s #1 Jude Correa also won his third Powerade title, this time at 215 pounds. Winning his second Powerade title was sophomore #4 Landon Sidun of Norwin with a 7-6 overtime win over #8 Paul Kenny of Christian Brothers Academy.

In one of the tournament’s most anticipated finals matches, St. Joseph Regional’s #3 Ryan Burton pinned State College’s #5 Asher Cunningham in the third period at 172 pounds.

Delbarton Dominates At Catholic School Duals

Four nationally ranked teams competed at the Catholic School Duals in New Jersey this past weekend with #5 Delbarton winning its second straight title at this event.

In the final, Delbarton beat St. Peter’s Prep 50-12. St. Peter’s Prep came into the weekend unranked but moved into the Flo 40 at #29 this week with its second-place finish. Delbarton also got a win over #30 St. John Vianney in the semifinal 47-17.

Led by #1 Anthony Knox at 126 pounds, St. John Vianney defeated #35 Christian Brothers Academy 49-25 for third place.

Southeast Polk Slices Through Field At Cheesehead

At the Cheesehead in Wisconsin, #20 Southeast Polk out of Iowa ran away with the team title with 663.5 points, while Jesuit High School took second with 457, and Lowell placed third with 451.5.

Southeast Polk had 10 total podium finishers, led by a trio of champions — Eddie Woody Jr. at 106, Nico DeSalvo at 113, and Holden Hansen at 215.

Jesuit didn’t have a champion but placed seven wrestlers in the top six, while Lowell had one champion — #20 Jackson Blum at 132.

St. Michael Albertville Prevails At The Clash 

It was #21 St. Michael Albertville which won a team title at The Clash National Duals in Wisconsin with a perfect 6-0 record. After winning its pool, St. Michael Albertville went on to win all three duals in the championship bracket, downing second-placer Shakopee 51-16. The closest dual the tournament champs had was a 41-24 win over Staples Motley.

Bettendorf went 4-2 to finish third in the championship bracket. In the second-place bracket (made up of all the second-place finishers from the eight-team pool brackets), Chicago Marist went 3-0 and 5-1 overall to win that bracket. Its only loss came to Shakopee 29-27 in the Bracket A final.