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Hernando Today

Short-handed Hernando finishes 10th at Land O' Lakes

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By MARTY MILLER, Hernando Today correspondent

Published: December 28, 2007

Updated: 12/27/2007 05:55 pm

LAND O' LAKES - In a way, this past weekend's Ed Goodpaster Invitational Wrestling Tournament at Land O' Lakes High School sort of resembled a Grapefruit League exhibition baseball game for first-year Hernando Head Coach Joe McLain.

A lot of time during the exhibition season, especially when a team is on the road, it will leave a number of starters home and take second-line players.

That is basically what happened to McLain and his Leopard team over the weekend as Hernando wrestled without four of its normal regulars.

With Tim Ball, Taylor Rotunda, Nick Pauliot and Fernando Gomez all out of the tournament for various reasons, Coach McLain still thought his team did fine in the 21-team individual tournament.

Jesse Graham, a senior who came into the final with a 21-0 record, lost the 145-pound final to Justin Swilling of Matanzas, 3-2, in four overtimes.

Along with the showing of Graham, the Leopards also had Daniel Pritz at 125 pounds and James Davidson at 171 collect third-place finishes while Chris Bishop finished fourth at 130 pounds as the Leopards wound up in 10th place overall.

"I think we did OK considering," McLain said Saturday before the start of the tournament finals. "We pretty much ended up where we thought we would. I mean, when you have four of your starters missing, that's a lot of potential points that we won't get."

No longer unbeaten

Graham's loss in the 145-pound final was as close as a match could get. The bracket was loaded and according to McLain, four of the wrestlers were in last year's state tournament.

Graham started the tourney by taking a 21-6 technical fall from Cain Thomas of Gainesville-Eastside, before registering a 9-1 major decision over Tavares White of Miami Springs in the quarterfinals.

Graham, a two-time state qualifier, then beat Cody Neptune of Citrus 7-2 in the semifinal to set up the final against Swiling.

In the title match, each wrestler earned an escape, good for one point, during regulation. Then in the second OT, Swiling got an escape with 18 seconds left, but was called for stalling with two seconds to go to tie it up at 2-all.

After a third scoreless OT, Swiling escaped from Graham at 18 seconds to win the match.

"The whole time I think he knew my best move was shooting because all he did the whole match was push me off," said a disappointed Graham later. "To be truthful, I think he was stalling the whole match and I definitely think if we wrestled again, it would be different."

Besides the second-place finish from Graham, the Leopards had Pritz beat Jacob Trotter of Mitchell 8-2 to take third at 125 pounds while Davidson earned a decision over Jarrod Carmody of Pasco, 12-7, to wind up third at 171.

Hernando now is off until Jan. 4-5's rugged Clay Invitational.

"That will probably be the biggest test of the year for us," said McLain. "It's always a tough tournament but we will have everybody back by then.

"It's hard to talk about how we did team-wise because we're missing so many people. We used JV wrestlers like George Smith, Dakota Raney and Casey Hofstetter and they got some varsity experience. But overall, we had a good night."

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