While the wrestling team was able to pick up two individual championships, as a team, the Falcons secured a third-place finish.

Saturday, Oct. 1, at the Santa Ana tournament, the team gathered 102 points, but wasn’t enough to get first-place victory.

One of the champions of the Santa Ana event was from the 141-pound division Richard Pocock. He was also able to get a championship victory at the West Hills tournament as well as the weekend prior.

He said, “I feel good about [the championship]. It wasn’t as dominate as much as I wanted. I was sick over the weekend so I didn’t really feel at my top, which led me to make me feel like, if I can beat them while I’m sick, then I can beat them while I’m well.

“It’s hard to explain, but I was sick and it made me feel good that I know I can beat these guys even though I’m not at my best I can still beat these guys.”

The sophomore was able to be victorious in all of his matches, even though he was under the weather.

Pocock went on to speak about the difficulty of his finals match when it went double overtime.

He said, “My finals match […] we went double overtime on that one. He took me down at the end of the third period to tie it up, then we went to single over time.

“We got into a big scramble and neither of us got a take-down, that’s when we went to double overtime. I took him down and I beat him.”

Another individual that stood out at the tournament was the 165-pound freshmen Blake Vasquez. He went to the finals in his division but was not able to pick up the win.

He admitted that he was pretty sloppy and that his right eyebrow was opened up a minute and a half into the match,but made it clear that was no excuse as to what went down.

“I wrestled kind of sloppy, I had the eye thing. In the first period my eye got busted open and they had to tap it. I’m not going to use that as an excuse. I didn’t have a good depth presumption so it was kind of hard to wrestle. But I could’ve wrestled a lot better, [my opponent] was good but I felt that I was better,” Vasquez said.

He went on to say that he’ll be up and ready of Wednesday, Oct. 12 at Palomar.

Coach Don Garriott explained that a few of the guys were left home to rest up and heal up from the West Hills tournament and that this wasn’t that big of a tournament to push his team to it’s limits. He’ll save that for upcoming events.

He said, “We left some [men] home because a couple [men] were kind of banged up and it’s just not that important of an event to push them and have to wrestle. We got some bigger stuff coming up and so that was part of the reason…why we left 40 points home, so I’m not worried about that.

“It’s much more important that we get healthy for the regional duels that are coming up.”