Vikings Get Revenge, And Conference Title, In Victory over Pinecrest

Redemption came twice for the Vikings Wednesday night at home.

“It was probably the biggest crowd I’ve wrestled in front of. The last big crowd was my sophomore year. It was kind of nerve racking,” Union Pines senior captain Jayden Crawford said.

The crowd support from both sides was nice to both squads, but so too was a 54-18 stomping of Pinecrest at home for Union Pines. Building up a lead in the light weights, the Vikings split the six matches from 132 pounds to 170 pounds, the strength of the Pinecrest lineup, to secure the win.

“Our main concern was they had really good guys between those weights. I knew our light weights would pull through and we would do good there,” Crawford said.

Pinecrest won the conference title last year in a match between the rivals played at Southern Lee, 48-22. The last 360-plus days has seen a Union Pines team devoted to rectifying that loss, as well as the loss in the state dual team final last year.

“We talk about it, and the goal is to try and get back on the mat with Fred T. Foard again. They stay hungry, and most of the time their hunger shows in the practice room,” Union Pines coach Brian Gray said. “They work hard and they put in a bunch of time in the preseason coming in here. They’re staying focused and staying up, and continuing to get better at this point.”

With Pinecrest slipping back into the match with a second-period pin from senior Riley Merchant at 145 pounds, cutting the Viking lead to 21-12, the clock was ticking down in the third period of the 152-pound match between Union Pines’ Houston Leeah and Pinecrest’s Dallin Newcomer.

With a slim margin on the scoreboard, Leeah was scrambling for whatever bonus points he could provide his team in the match.

“I knew Pinecrest is definitely a good team, and we needed any team points we could get. I could tell he was kind of tired toward the last 20 seconds,” Leeah said. “I knew I was up and not close enough to get the major (decision), so if I could get up and could take him to his back, it would be a lot better for us.”

The Viking junior was in the bottom position as his coaches and teammates were shouting “short time” to him. In an explosive effort, Leeah slipped out of Newcomer’s grasp and made a quick lunge to take down the Patriot, putting him on his back as the clock ticked down.

“When I had him on his back, I was just trying to squeeze as hard as I could. I didn’t care how hard I had to go, if my veins busted or what, I just had to keep going,” Leeah said.

The smack of the mat by the official with five seconds left secured a six-point win by fall for the Vikings, that nearly was a three-point win by decision.

“That kind of was close to a nail in the coffin,” Gray said.

Leeah said that this season he has focused on his own wrestling technique over the guy he shakes hands with before the match. He also has tried to keep a tunnel-vision focus going into matches.

“It definitely feels better than any match I’ve won this year so far. I don’t like overhyping it in my head until after the match,” Leeah said before releasing a sigh of relief. “I feel amazing right now.”

Pinecrest won one match the rest of the way.

“That’s a six-point swing right there,” Pinecrest coach Bob Curtin said of the 152-pound match. “Middle weights had some good matches, and we didn’t get the movement we wanted, and they did. Like I said, when you wrestle tough teams from top to bottom, every second counts. They wrestled really well on the edge until the last second for a couple matches.”

The Patriots’ three wins in the match all came by fall. Elijah Ybarra won with a first-period pin at 132 pounds to snap Union Pines’ four straight victories to open the match. Merchant had his second-period win by fall at 145 pounds, and fellow senior Jayden Dobeck claimed a first-period fall at 170 pounds for his 150th career win.

“I told the guys that we lost the battle, but we can win the war. We’ve got some things we need to clean up and get after,” Curtin said. “We’ve got to get back in the wrestling room and clean some things up. Some of our best guys had some really tough matches. That’s a good team; that’s a whale of a team, but we need to walk out of here with our heads held high and we’ve got to get after it.”

Most of Union Pines’ lineup returned from last year’s squad, and with wrestlers a year older and wiser, they have looked to continue to push the program forward this year with only two losses in dual meets this season, and the latest one came over the weekend to a state champion-caliber Northwest Guilford squad.

A win in conference play earlier this season against Hoke County helped to continue the development of the players entering Wednesday’s match.

“This year, we had a really good win against Hoke. A really good win with everyone wrestling their best, and everyone had time to improve up to this match,” Crawford said. “As a team, we had a lot of our team doing stuff over the summer. We all just got so much better, and our work shows.”

Crawford sits at 30-8 this season at 120 pounds, and credits a newfound mental focus that has helped him this season on the mat. That mental state was in full effect in his match against Ethan Schlietchen in the first-period pin.

“I kind of have this zone I found earlier in the year. I can just get in that zone and wrestle how I wrestle all the time and how I train,” Crawford said.

The Vikings opened the match with major decisions from Aiden Enright and Keaton Crawford to set up Jayden Craword’s win, and Joe Lloyd won by a 7-4 decision at 126 pounds to make it a 17-0 lead in the match.

“The lower weights really did a good job. Everybody won that they were supposed to win, and they picked up bonus points,” Gray said.

Sophomore Finn McCafferty won a 12-3 major decision at 138 pounds, and sophomore Brock Sullivan pulled out a 6-2 decision at 160 pounds in his match with Cooper Ogden, a meeting of two state qualifiers from a year ago.

“Brock had a tough match. He’s beaten that kid before, but three times in a row, it gets difficult to keep beating somebody,” Gray said.

Now taking over a leadership role with the Vikings this season, Jayden Crawford admits that there were doubts of what this year’s Union Pines team might be capable of on the mat in hindsight, but he has left those preconceived notions in the past as the team shifts to the postseason.

“Last year, we made it that far and you think, ‘Aw man, we won’t be the same next year.’ I felt like I thought that, but honestly we can do it again,” Crawford said. “If we keep fighting like we did against Hoke and Pinecrest, I think we can come out on top.”

Union Pines and Pinecrest wrestle in the conference individual tournament Saturday at Hoke County.

Contact Jonathan Bym at (910) 693-2470 or jonathan@thepilot.com.