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The Winchester High wrestling team had a fun week of exciting matches and wins, as the regular season winds down, beginning with the Jan. 28 matchup win against visiting Lexington on Senior Night, 60-12.
“We (honored) our 15 seniors, who have been grinding it out with the usual ups and downs the last four years,” said Assistant Coach Vitaly Napadow. “It was a moment to also thank the wrestling moms and dads, who came out to support the team for our last home dual match of the season.”
Head Coach Ryan Errico served as the master of ceremonies, and once the match began those same seniors contributed to wins across the lineup, including a memorable turnaround pin by Thomas Blake at 138-pounds to go along with pins by Ilyas Malik, Luca Kovacev, Caleb Kolberg, Beni Curcio and Kai Napadow Baquero, who for an added bonus recorded his 100th career win.
Winchester has been employing a senior-oriented starting lineup the last couple of months, which means there will be many openings to be had come next year. But for now, the postseason is right around the corner for the graduating seniors, who want to keep on succeeding to leave their mark on the program.
With that said, the show must go on, and as a result they were back on the bus for Duxbury three days later to close out the month of January to participate in a super quad meet, consisting of six teams that included four dual matches.
The Red & Black went 2-2 on the day, beating Nauset (64-12) and Bristol Aggie (53-24), while suffering close losses to Somerset-Berkley (39-35) and Boston Latin (48-30).
Three Winchester wrestlers went 4-0, and they were Napadow Baquero (120-pounds), Eddie Donlon (144-pounds) and Malik (175-pounds).
Napadow said that there was a dedicated mat setup in the gym just for JVs, which allowed lots of Winchester understudies to get in some competitive matches against actual opponents.
After the Duxbury quad match, the Red & Black still owned a 14-11 overall dual meet winning record on the season.
“It’s always tricky managing the strength of schedule before the season,” said Napadow. “We have done a good job in balancing confidence-building opportunities (for the younger wrestlers), while challenging our (veterans) with scheduled matches against powerhouse teams across the state.”
The Winchester grapplers were scheduled to head to Swampscott High to take on the Black & Blue co-op on Feb. 4, before going to Greater Lowell Tech on Saturday, Feb. 7, for another quad matchup that will feature the likes of Greater Lowell, Gloucester and Lincoln-Sudbury. It will be the team’s last regular season match, before the postseason gets underway.
Joe McConnell is a longtime, award-winning sports editor for numerous North Shore publications. He began covering Winchester sports for the News in November 2024 and is currently its Sports Editor. He can be reached at editor@winchesternews.org.
