Five teams traveled to Hilmar on Saturday to join the Yellowjackets in the revived Hilmar Irwin-Stevinson Lions Invitational. Pitman, Buhach Colony, Atwater, Livingston, and Gregori High each competed in the tournament but only one walked away on top. That honor belonged to the Pride who finished the day 5-0 as a team, while Hilmar finished fourth with a team score of 2-3.

“It was exciting,” Hilmar’s head coach Bruce Scott said. “I felt like I went back a few years; I really enjoyed myself. By the end of the day my guys were wrestling better than in the beginning of the day and that is what we wanted.”

Pitman rolled its way to first place with the help of five perfect individual efforts. Matt Perez, Nick Roditis, Nick Ohsbar, and Hayden Mattox each finished 5-0.

“Everybody’s got their own style so it was good to go wrestle kids that had different styles,” Pitman head coach Adam Vasconcellos said. “It was also a good preview for Buhach who we face in a couple weeks.”

Hilmar also had some stellar individual efforts. Mathew Labass and Antonio Melo each went 5-0 with Melo recording four of them by pins.

“They’re the ones that have had the experience so I figured they’d be the ones I could count on,” Scott said of the pair. “There were a lot of lessons learned; we got a good barometer.”