The Vikings have a returning passel of expert and improving wrestlers — returning individual league weight-class champs, as well as experienced seniors and juniors – plus beginning wrestlers who will enter the dual meet competition this week in defense of La Jolla’s 2022-23 Eastern League team title.
Noah Pace and Gus Rinaldi are the big names who will lead ninth-year head coach Kellen Delaney’s squad into the busy January slate of tournaments and meets. Rinaldi was a league champ last year and will wrestle at 175 pounds this season. A precise technician on the mat, Gustav looks primed for a great senior season to tactically entrap opponents after competition in the Fourth Annual Granite Hills Tournament on Dec. 2 and the 37th Marauder Invitational at Mira Mesa on Dec. 9.
Pace, he formerly of the Clark Kent mild-mannered look with thick frames off the mat and Superman performance without spectacles on the mat, has slipped into contact lenses this year. The “new look” athlete is wrestling a weight up as a sophomore at 113 pounds.
During the Granite Hills tourney, right after winning a quarterfinal bout by major decision (leading his foe by over 15 points), the returning 106-pound Eastern League champ breathlessly dissected his moves: “I was just getting the arm bar, and putting him (Emilio Cordova of Imperial) to his back, and count to three, and then getting back up, and keep on doing it. And also, when he got me on top, I would just reverse and get back on top of him.”
Senior returners also include Nerva Mugisha (120 pounds); twins Nick (144) and Abraham (138) Sierra; Anthony Volkov (157); Hayden Worst (190); and Emilio Valencia (215).
On the girls’ side, veteran Matisse Pickett, a junior at 120 pounds, returns for her third year. Maddie Quach, a sophomore 105-pounder, proudly wears her black LJ letterman’s jacket earned last year. Hannah Kressin, a senior at 125 whose brother, sophomore Liam Kressin, is also competing, and freshman Isabella Itkin, 110, undertake wrestling for the first time.
Quach, after trailing Emily Arai of Valley Center 2-1 in a tough match at the Marauder event on Dec. 9, fought back to win, 8-5. Harry Wilson, one of her coaches, said, “She stayed super mentally tough. The girl she wrestled (Arai) is very good. The other girl kind of tired, so Maddie was still mentally tough the entire match.”
Wilson and fellow coach Vinny Iudici were demonstrating to Quach how to swing her weight around behind Arai. What were you showing her? Wilson: “The other girl was hanging on her head a lot, so they were controlling her head. It’s exhausting (to have someone hang on your head)—plus it can set up all their moves.”
Jayden Williams is a junior veteran 165-pounder who transferred from Samuel Clemens High in San Antonio, Texas. He was effective at the Granite Hills event and against Holtville in a tri-meet at Madison on Dec. 7.
