STOCKTON — Two years of the Sac-Joaquin Section hosting girls' team dual playoffs, two blue banners for the Pitman High School girls wrestling program.
Last Saturday, the Pride won the Division I championship in convincing fashion. Despite having to forfeit a pair of matches in each of the team’s three duals in the tournament, the gals in green outscored its opponents — Manteca, Will C. Wood (Vacaville) and Lincoln (Stockton) — by a combined score of 173-69.
“There's a little nervousness in the morning because we didn't have our strongest lineup, missing our 1-5-pounder and our heavyweight, but knowing we won it last year, the girls were excited to be back here.,” said head coach Adam Vasconcellos. "But this is the expectation for our girls. They want to win no matter what's going on. When we step out there as a team, the expectation is that we're going to win. They just found a way to get it done again.”
Despite the emotions and being short-handed, the Pride certainly made it look easy, beginning the day with a 63-18 rout of Manteca. That set the table for a meeting with Will C. Wood, a fast-moving dual that ended in a 57-21 victory. With time in between that round and the championship dual, the Pride watched intently as Lincoln and Tokay battled in the semifinal.
“We were able to watch that dual and saw that Lincoln's lightweights dominated Toka,” Vasconcellos said. “That meant that the final was going to come down to their strength versus our strength. But I knew our strength was just a little bit better. Our bottom 10 weight classes are just nails.”
Nails, indeed, with Saturday's title match with Lincoln beginning at 117 pounds, where sophomore Bella Serrano, usually a competitor at 110, pinned one of Lincoln’s top-ranked reigning state qualifiers in Gabriella Stallings.
“I wasn't expecting to have to bump up a weight class, where the girls are bigger and pretty tough,” Serrano said. “But I feel likeI have great technique… I just had to go out there and be tough, too.”
“That set the tone,” Vasconcellos said. “When you pin one of their best wrestlers, it takes the wind out of the sails a bit.”
The Pride proceeded to win three of the next four matches by pin, courtesy of Ava Velasquez, Patricia Bray and Ailey Gray, to build a lead they’d never relinquish. The final score was 53-30.
“I knew that, even though we had some losses to our lineup heading into the day, we weren't going to skip a beat,” said Bray, returning state qualifier for the Pride who earned pins in the duals against Manteca and Wood and a technical fall in the clincher against Lincoln.
“We had a lot of confidence coming into this season,” Bray continued. “Last year with (the section) doing girls duals for the first time, it was a great opportunity. “I knew the boys had done it before, and I was like, ‘Why can't we?’ We were able to do it and, looking back, realize how big of a deal that was. To do it again for a second straight year is really special.”
As for the boys, they fell just short of themselves repeating as section champions.
The Pride, who won the Division I banner last year following consecutive Division II titles, finished as a runner-up to Oakdale, dropping the championship dual by a 36-32 score. The boys had defeated River City of West Sacramento by a 74-6 score in the opening round and Vacaville by a 39-31 score in the semifinal to punch their ticket to the title clash.
Local wrestling programs will now turn their attention to the individual playoffs. The journey officially began this week with conference events taking place across the region, including Friday's Central California Athletic League Championships featuring Pitman and Turlock high schools.
Bray has high hopes not just for herself and her teammates in the girl's lineup, but for the entire Pitman program.
“Personally, the goal is to medal at state,” she said. “The whole team has big goals. I can't wait to go in and trust my training. My whole team, we want to go in and show what we could do and show just how good we are.”
A full recap of the CCAL Championships will be in Wednesday’s Journal.
