The trifecta was completed on Thursday afternoon for the Pitman wrestling team at the Central California Conference Championships atTurlock High.
Already with a regular season sweep in league duals, including a Division II banner after winning the Sac-Joaquin Section team duals, Pitman added to their accomplishments by winning the CCC title outright after dominating the day and securing the top place with a 50-plus point advantage.
Turlock, which also saw multiple first place finishes, ended the day with a positive result, but ultimately finished in third place as a team, one point behind Golden Valley.
In the end, both Turlock and Pitman qualified 24 wrestlers to move on to the Divisional tournament.
“We wrestled well,” said Pitman head coach Adam Vasconcellos. “Wrestling is such a different sport, to have them reach potential is extremely hard and as the season progressed and January rolled around I saw these guys fighting for each other. I knew during our first dual we would do something special.”
“I think our kids battled and did a super job. Now we look forward to divisionals and hopefully get all 11 in Masters,” said Turlock head coach Mike Contreras. “We will see how it goes. It’s kind of a nice deal the kids get to stay local. We are excited and will get back to work and see how we do.”
Pitman finished with five first place finishes while Turlock added three.
The Pride’s first place results consisted of Adam Velasquez (126), Trevor Mattox (120), Joseph La Rosa (152), Isaiah Perez (170) and heavyweight Julian Barrera.
“I think all of our guys lived up to their seeds and a couple of our guys overachieved,” said Vasconcellos.
Some of those were sophomores Cesar Tellez (113) and Nolan Lock (160), who each captured fourth place finishes.
Anthony Carbajal (220) and Izzy Tubera (106) took second while Kendall La Rosa (132), Tondrick Pope (138), Jesus Padilla (182) and Brendan Tallent (195) took third.
This is only the second time that the Pride has gone undefeated in league duals and won the CCC tournament since the 2014-15 season.
“They have always risen during challenges, it’s pretty impressive,” Vasconcellos added. “Thing is to move on to Masters and see what we do from there.”
Turlock’s champions consisted of Alex Oliveira (134), Adelo Fields (184) and Breck Jeffus (197).
“We should have had four champions but the referring was bad at 160s,” said Contreras.
That 160s match included Dom Silva who lost in overtime to take second place.
“I strongly feel we should have won 60s and they made terrible calls,” said Contreras. “We were winning against Golden Valley and ended up losing at 140s, so we really should have been second but that is okay. What’s the most important is qualifying guys.”
Turlock qualifies 11 while Pitman moves 13 on to Divisionals.
The Divisional Championship tournament will take place at Pitman High beginning at 11 a.m. Friday.
