By OLIVER CORPUS
Staff Writer
UHS barely clinched a victory on Saturday, January 17, tying with Woodbridge with both teams ending up with 36 points. Yet, they broke the stalemate as UHS had more takedowns and were crowned winners. Varsity Captain Nathan Ohashi described how tied matches are settled as “the winner of the match comes down to a series of criteria. The refs and coaches went through the stats (shots taken, successful takedowns, nearfalls, pins, technicals, major decisions, etc.) to decide the winner and we won because we had more nearfalls,” said Ohashi.
The winner of the match came down to technicalities, yet if just one wrestler had won or lost a game, the scales could have tipped drastically. Ohashi was put at a disadvantage in his match, but managed to cling on as he “hadn’t been in practice for a week due to an injury.” He thought “the team could have improved on mental conditioning and staying strong throughout the match…some of the wrestlers got tired during their matches and it showed in their performance,” said Ohashi when describing some of the factors that could have led to the very close match.
Nathan Ohashi’s freshman brother, Dylan Ohashi, is also a varsity wrestler and performed well although he lost his match. He has high praise for the others who did well saying, “the main people who shined out were varsity captains who all won their matches as well as Lorena Egea, Kaimen Anderson, and Ethan Chin,” said Ohashi.
Although junior Ethan Chin won his match, he focused on improvement and pointed out areas that he could improve in. “I say that my performance was good overall, but I still need to improve my techniques and strength.”
The next match was scheduled to be on January 24 against Beckman, where the team lost 23-51.