In dominating the Santa Clara Valley De Anza Division dual meet season and league finals, the Los Gatos High wrestling team has set itself up for a potentially special performance in the upcoming Central Coast Section Championships.
The Wildcats won the league finals by a whopping 50 points on Feb. 11 at Santa Clara High, an impressive feat considering section stalwart programs like Fremont High of Sunnyvale and Palo Alto were in the tournament.
“We won by 50, which was a good surprise,” Wildcats coach Greg Varela said. “We did really well. We were expecting a good fight and had some tough individual matches. I’m proud of our guys.”
Peter Bowen (128 pounds), Timmy Murabito (134), E.J. Parco (140), Anthony Pavlov Ramirez (147), Daniil Gorshkov (170) and Sascha Nyzhnyk (197) all won individual titles for the Wildcats, who enter the Feb. 18-19 CCS Championships at Watsonville High ranked No. 2 in the section.
Even though the Wildcats are in great position to finish second or perhaps overtake Gilroy High if everything goes to plan, Varela knows his team must perform well again in a tougher setting.
“Going into CCS we’re not the clear-cut No. 2 or 3 team,” he said. “If we want to reach our goal, everything has to go right and at league finals everything went right. We did good and I’m proud of the boys. But it’s not always going to be pretty and things aren’t always going to bounce in our favor. We’ll find out what kind of grit we have when we get punched in the nose.
“I literally tell my guys that before every (high level tournament) that you can have a great game plan, but everyone has a great game plan until they get punched in the face. When that happens, you’re going to have to figure it out because you can game plan all you want, but at some point you’re going to be in a fist fight and guys are going to drag you out and put you to the test.”
Sergiy Nyzhnyk (184), Om Shastri (220) and heavyweight Dylan Lucas had runner-up finishes in their respective weight classes, scoring valuable points for the team. Varela enjoys seeing all of his wrestlers improve, and the Nyzhnyk brothers are no exception.
Sergiy and Sascha were unranked at the beginning of the season, but Sergiy has risen to No. 2 in the CCS at 182 pounds and Sascha has ascended to No. 11 in the 195 pound division. In his league final title match, Sergiy lost to Palo Alto’s Cade Creighton, who is ranked No. 8 in the state and a viable contender to win state.
“I think Cade is going to win state so Sergiy had a good league finals,” Varela said. “This is Sergiy’s first year of wrestling a full season. He’s been practicing with us and gone to five tournaments with us over the last two years, but with Covid, he didn’t get to wrestle as much in that time. So it’s really exciting for a first-year wrestler to be No. 2 in CCS and No. 8 or 9 in the state.”
Even though Los Gatos won the league finals handily, Varela said the individual title matches were closer than they appeared.
“E.J. won by pin, but his opponent from Fremont was giving him everything he could handle up until the pin,” Varela said. “It was good for E.J. to dig deep and wrestle the way he did. Fremont was ready and we wanted our guys to be tested and pushed. Anthony was down to his Fremont opponent and eventually got the pin, but he had to fight back.
“The pins make it seem like we really got them good, but these were some tough, grinding matches. That’s what we needed and wanted and that’s what we got. Fremont was ready, they put our guys to the test, pushed us and got us ready for CCS and state.”
NOTE: The Los Gatos girls basketball, boys soccer and wrestling teams all finished among the top five in their respective sports in the CCS 2021-2022 Winter Season Scholastic Championship Team Awards. The girls basketball squad’s 3.882 GPA was tops in their sport and second highest among all winter sports teams in the section, boys or girls. The Wildcats’ boys soccer team compiled a 3.687 GPA—third highest among all boys soccer teams—and the wrestling team carried a 3.553, second best among all of the section’s wrestling programs.
Sports editor Emanuel Lee can be reached at el**@we*****.com .
