On Saturday, Dec. 14, the boys’ junior varsity wrestling team picked up six first, second, and third-place medals at the Peninsula Athletic League novice tournament at Aragon High School. A solid lineup of mostly first-year and a few second-year wrestlers represented Burlingame at the tournament, along with teammates from Mills High School.
At these tournaments, wrestlers from different schools are separated into numerous brackets based on their respective weight division, and play a knockout-style tournament within their bracket until there is a winner. Burlingame’s top performer was sophomore Dabys Valdez-Godinez, who won his bracket and was the team’s only first-place finisher at the tournament, with five other wrestlers finishing in second or third place. After some impressive, hard-fought victories at the eight-hour event, assistant coach Denise Burch immediately commended the wrestlers for their support of each other throughout the tournament.
“Wrestling tends to bring the kids together really well because it’s such a long day, and it’s been really awesome watching the [Burlingame] kids come together, and the [Burlingame] and Mills kids come together,” Burch said.
The tournament was a display of resilience and mental strength for the team, as wrestlers had to rally back from losses to continue moving up their brackets. Junior Miles Davis lost his first match, but then won his next three, securing a third-place finish.
“I was able to turn it around because my first match really motivated me to do better, I had a spark or a flame that I really wanted to push forward,” Davis said. “And it really gave me the confidence, because I was beating him, but he just beat me in the third quarter.”
The matches were also quite physical and required exceptional technique on top of the mental game.
“Physically, you have to have the endurance to keep going,” senior Mark Betanzo said. “When they’re trying to pin you and you’re trying to fight off your back, it’s the hardest moment, if you stop fighting it’s done, and if you keep fighting you can get out of it and push yourself to win the match.”
In Davis’ final match, he got off to a slow start against his Woodside High School opponent, but eventually came back and secured third place with a 10-8 victory despite distraction from the sidelines.
“[Spectators] were heckling me, they were saying how I was tired in the first round,” Davis said. “That really sparked something in me, because obviously, I wasn’t tired. I kind of got mad at that, and I feel like everything just really motivated me.”
Betanzo, who won three of his five matches, finished fourth place in his bracket, a performance he was quite proud of.
“I got to try out a bunch of stuff I was working out, I don’t care if I won or lost, I was just happy with how I did,” Betanzo said. “Every practice, I push myself pretty hard and I can tell that I’m improving little by little.”
Given the success of junior varsity wrestlers at the tournament, Burch commended the team’s desire to win and feels confident the younger players will make notable contributions this season and in the future.
“I feel that we have a lot of newer wrestlers,” Burch said. “Once they get a tournament under their belt, and especially when they win, then they have the desire to keep winning.”
