FHHS Wrestling Upsets Hillcrest In Playoff Opener

Forest Hills High School's wrestling team staged a comeback Tuesday night overcoming a 27-9 deficit to beat Hillcrest High School 40-39 in a Division B playoff game.

Short players in two different weight classes, the young Forest Hills squad dropped two early matches by pin and points.  Seeing the large deficit didn't faze the visiting Rangers, and they won enough matches throughout to keep the score close enough to set up Hussam Abosrie and Elan Muladzhanov's consecutive pins of Hillcrest.

Hero: Junior Hussam Abosrie, who fought valiantly for his team all season long, pinned Jevon Walcott of Hillcrest during a pivotal match. With Forest Hills behind by by eight, Abosrie's pin closed the gap to 35-33. 

That result was followed immediately by Elan Muladzhanov's pin of Hillcrest's Brent Owen.

Muladzhanov's pin put the Rangers on top to stay.

The Turning Point: Hillcrest lead 27-9 when Forest Hills' Mirshod Khaydarov took to the mat against Trayshawn Hargroves.  The hard fought battle between the two was the first of three consecutive decisions on points for the Rangers.  

What earlier had seemed insurmountable was suddenly manageable, and though Hillcrest's Oluwafemi Olasokan stemmed the tide with a pin of Sebastian Kaestner, the visiting squad was within striking distance of the lead and the stage was set for  Abosrie's victory.

Bottom Line: Coach Stephen Serio noted the relative inexperience of his squad, making their current run all the more impressive. The Rangers advance and are still alive in the tournament with a never-say-die attitude borne of the ability to rebound from an early deficit.

Quotable: "With the group I have of first-year wrestlers I'm real happy we made it this far," said a satisifed Coach Serio after the match. "I don't think we wrestled our best today, but they're a real skilled team and obviously we wrestled well enough to get to tomorrow.  We lost our 96 pounder and our 112 pounder so we automatically started 12 points in the hole — it's hard to come back from that.  But they did a good job they fought back today and even the guys that were up against a more experienced guy wrestled tough and kept it within 2 points." 

Coach Serio said he was also pleased with the progress of the players.  "Some guys are real raw and they're making a lot of mistakes but they're improving all the time.  I'm just happy to get more mat time tomorrow and more experience.  It's going  to be good to go up against these higher level teams."

Who's next? Forest Hills will get a second chance at second-ranked Benjamin Cardozo Wednesday night.

 Box Score:

Forest Hills

40

39

Hillcrest