OA Wrestling Downs Stoughton For First Dual Meet Victory

After a second place finish in Saturday’s OA opener, Oliver Ames wrestling coach Adam Pomella came into Wednesday’s Davenport Division dual-meet against Stoughton without seniors Matt Harding and Nick Hutchinson, who were nursing their injuries.

What started out as a concern for Pomella turned into a hard-fought 57-18 victory over an improved Stoughton squad at the Nixon Gymnasium.

“We had a couple of our starters [Harding and Hutchinson] so I was worried going into the meet,” Pomella said. “I’m psyched about the outcome. We had a couple of 50-50 matchups that our kids won and what won it for us was the depth.”

Even without Harding and Hutchinson, OA showed its depth in many of those “50-50” matchups as Pomella alluded to. The first four matches were an indication of that.

In the 106 matchup, OA senior Tim Gover defeated Stoughton freshman Brandon Allen via pinfall in the opening bout. The Black Knights took the next two matches with with senior captain Steven Colling (113) and junior Michael Johnson (120) earning pinfalls over OA sophomore Lucas Keegan and junior Devin Ness, respectively, to give Stoughton its only lead of the night at 12-6.

After Johnson's victory, OA freshman Jameson Dixon (126) provided a spark for his team in his matchup with Stoughton junior Mikey Carrdosa to tie things at 12-12 by pinfall.

“As soon as he learns to move, he [Dixon] going to be dangerous,” Pomella said about the first year varsity wrestler. “His aggression, his strength…it’s all phenomenal. For a freshman he’s unbelievable.”

Other highlights during OA'slengthy 55-point run included senior Devin Thomas' third-round pinfall over Robbie Mone (152), senior captain Mitchell Gadless' (170) 33-second pinfall over Stephen Stenstrom (170) and Zach Ortega’s victory over Sean Flaherty (182).

Despite the loss, Stoughton proved to be a more than formidable opponent for OA in its first appearance of the winter.

“I thought we did well in our first appearance,” said second-year Stoughton coach Justin Leonard. “We had a lot of wrestlers who were in their first meet of the year and there were a lot of close matchups throughout the night. After talking to my staff and the OA staff we both thought that the final score didn’t necessarily reflect the actual outcome.”

Stoughton ended the night on a brighter note when senior co-captain Andrew “Paco” Paradas (285) – one of the top heavyweights in the state – earned a victory over OA junior Jake McCabe by pinfall.

Stoughton is off until Monday night when they travel to Sharon for a Davenport matchup.

“We’ll get right to work at practice and work on a few things,” Leonard said. “Hopefully we can give Sharon a good test.”

OA, meanwhile, looks to repeat as champions of the Taunton Invitational tournament Saturday morning before traveling to North Attleboro for dual-meet action on Monday.

“We’re defending champions of the tournament this weekend and hopefully we can repeat,” Pomella said. “A lot of the teams that we’ll be seeing on Saturday got a lot tougher so you never know. If we can get healthy then we can do some good damage [on Saturday].”