East Aurora senior Matt Young on Saturday ended a drought for his school’s wrestling program dating back five years.
The streak Batavia senior Seth Winkle snapped was a little longer, and more personal.
Winkle took first at 145 pounds and Young captured the 160-pound title to lead the way for Aurora area wrestlers in the Upstate Eight Tournament at Larkin.
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They had to share the unofficial title for overall most emotional victory celebration.
“It’s a breakthrough for me,” Winkle said.
Wearing a mask to protect a broken nose and wrestling with a pinkie finger swollen from an earlier broken bone, Winkle won 5-2 over longtime antagonist Niko Derain of St. Charles East for first. He ripped off the mask at the buzzer and began pumping his fist and hollering in jubilation — all for a good reason.
“We’ve wrestled each other since we were 6,” Winkle said. “I’d lost every time.”
Winkle (21-6) said his consecutive loss total to Derain was “at least 10,” and the latest came Tuesday for the Upstate Eight dual-meet championship.
“I knew I could get my shots in,” Winkle said. “The reason I lose to him so much is he’s a big-move guy. So he’ll put me on my back. I just had to stay away from that.”
Winkle’s victory was the only one in the finals for Batavia, which had seconds from and Joe Posledni (33-4) at 160 and Nick Benson (29-7) at 170. Batavia took third (179.5), 81.5 behind meet champion St. Charles East.
Posledni and Benson were top seeds, and Posledni’s loss came against the Tomcats’ Young by fall in 2:45.
“I definitely shocked some people,” Young said. “I can’t explain it.
“I guess I’d been searching around all year for my right weight class and hadn’t really settled in. Now I feel like I can make a (state) run.”
Unlike other Upstate Eight champion, Young had to wrestle in preliminaries and in four total matches. He beat West Aurora’s Jordan Wellington 2-0 in the prelims. After that he pinned Bartlett’s George Moretti and Geneva’s Nick Sowers.
“His confidence was up,” East Aurora coach Frank Davison said. “I thought he might be able to do this after he beat the West kid.”
Davison also coached Young’s brother Tim to a state title in 2014-15.
“Tim won state, but not conference,” Davison said.
The only Aurora-area program with two titles was West Aurora. Isaac Jacquez (32-2) at 126 and Steven Norman (32-7) at 182 won decisions to lead their team to a fourth-place finish with 175.5 points.
Norman decisioned St. Charles East’s Cody Glidewell 9-4. Jacquez snapped St. Charles East’s run of meet-opening weight class titles at three, beating Lucson Schneider 17-5.
“I usually try to work my attacks off of their forward pressure and go right into something,” Jacquez said. “I was just trying to open up and set my pace. I wanted to dominate.
“There’s still a lot to work on before state comes.”
The Blackhawks had second-place finishes from 285-pounder Josh Mayhew and 106-pound Reid Medlin.
Geneva also had two second-place finishes, and placed fifth as a team with 123.0. Michael Donatelli (19-6) lost 5-4 to Glenbard East’s Scott Szabo at 138 on a late takedown, and Cole Campbell lost to Glenbard East’s Jesus Lopez by fall in 4:40 at 220.
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