Nature Coast Underachieves At CCC

CLEARWATER - In a geodesic dome somewhat reminiscent of the top half of Epcot Center, Nature Coast showed up at the Clearwater Central Catholic Marauder Duals with only part of its team, and it came back to haunt it as forfeits cost it several points on its way to a fifth-place finish.

Clearwater Central Catholic, the 2006 Class 1A-10 champion, went undefeated on the day taking the first-place trophy Saturday evening knocking off Rockledge in the final match.

The Sharks finished fifth winning two matches against Calvary Christian and Sebring, and dropping two, one to host CCC and one to Satellite.

"I was looking forward to coming in and competing for first place, I think it would have fooled a lot of people if we would have done that," said Shark Head Coach Mike Lastra. "But I had one kid who all of the sudden had to work, one kid who went on vacation, another kid who's hurt, so going in with 10 people to a dual team tournament, you can't expect to compete with the teams.

"That being said, we wrestled CCC (Clearwater Central Catholic) who's wrestling for first place and in the matches we wrestled, they had one match over us," added Lastra. "We just wrestled Satellite and we beat them on the matches we wrestled; they beat us on a forfeit by six points."

How about the effort?

"I'm not satisfied at all," Lastra continued. "The coaching staff and I were looking forward to coming in here and coming home with a first-place trophy. The forfeits killed us, absolutely killed us. I think if we had no forfeits against Clearwater we would have possibly beat them. But no excuses, you go with what you got; we came in with a half-empty chamber and we ran out of bullets."

Lambert leads

Nature Coast's outstanding wrestler of the meet was junior Matt Lambert, who went 4-0 on the day with two pins and two decisions. "I wrestled two (matches) at 135, one at 140 and one at 145. It's more mental than physical," Lambert said. "We all know were physically ready, we've wrestled all year, but you got to psyche yourself up for it, you got to want it, you got to get aggressive on that mat. I noticed when I turn up that aggression I wrestle so much better and really dominate on the mat.

"This year my goal is to at least be the district champ, qualify for regionals, and I would really love to go to states and win as many matches as possible," said a joyful, but tired Lambert.

Coach Lastra commented on the team goals for the remainder of the season.

"This last week was our finals week. This year they did it a little different with finals right in the middle of January, so we had all half days and our schedule was kind of crazy," he commented. "But now we have two straight weeks to get back on schedule. Next week we have The Villages, an eight-team tournament with seven district teams that are going to be there, so it's a pretty good pre-tournament for the district. We want to come into districts and surprise a lot of people."