“We finished just short of goals for this year, very few wrestlers dropped the ball. Our team grew stronger.”
—Senior Nathan Rodriguez
Diamond Bar’s wrestling team placed fifth in the 2013 CIF Central Division tournament on Saturday as the Brahmas scored 133 points with four wrestlers placing top five in their respective weight class.
Junior Joseph Rodriguez had a bye in the first round of the 106-pound weight class. Rodriguez fell short in the third round knocking him out of the tournament. Next, sophomore Donny Palmer of the 113-pound weight class failed to get passed the first round but defeated his next two opponents.
Junior Jeremy Foo beat his opponent in the second round after a bye in the first. Although he did not win the third round, he proceeded to win the rest of his matches to place 5th in the 120-pound division. “We did pretty well this year, we had four people place at CIF this year which has been the most for a while now. We should have had at least a couple more but four was still pretty good compared to other schools,” Foo commented.
In the 126-pound weight class, senior Jungsoo Chang failed to get passed Johnny Foster who placed first in the division. Chang, however, did defeat his next three opponents falling just short of placing in the top five. Seniors Marcus Bernardino and Brian Chao and juniors Aleksander Jimenez and Aaron Oh also could not place winning two of their matches in the 132, 145, 152, and 160-pound divisions respectively. Senior Uli Wong of the 170-pound weight class also did not place as he won one of his matches.
Senior Nathan Rodriguez represented DB in the 182-pound weight class as he went on a hot streak to sweep all four opponents to rank first in his respective weight class. “We finished just short of goals for this year, very few wrestlers dropped the ball. At CIF we had to wait for a few hours before each match and that affected the wrestlers who needed to focus to make it to the next level. Our team grew stronger with 13 wrestlers making it to CIF and four going to masters,” Rodriguez commented.
Senior Math Carrillo similarly did very well to place third in the 195-pound division. In the 225-pound bracket, junior Dre Johnson made it all the way to the semi-finals but could not advance. He did however, win his next few matches to get third place.
The Brahmas had a successful day as it will have four wrestlers representing DB in masters and placed fifth in the tournament overall. DB has shown their capability to the furthest showing that it can compete against the top dogs in CIF. “Our performance was second best in school history to the 1998 team. Overall, we definitely exceeded all of our expectations and we had a great weekend,” coach Scott Usher commented.
