Bacon topples Ledyard in ECC wrestling

Ledyard High School had won five straight Eastern Connecticut Conference Large Division championships in wrestling and four consecutive ECC Championship meets.
Bacon Academy coach Mike Voiland is quick to point out that the Colonels have won 29 of the 36 ECC wrestling titles overall, so indeed it was a rare occurrence that the Colonels didn’t find themselves atop again this year.
They didn’t go down without a fight, however.
Ledyard had a chance right up until the heavyweight match in the championship finals Saturday night at Waterford High, a match that Bacon heavyweight Brian Webster won and the Bobcats dethroned the Colonels by a slim, 192 1/2 to 186 1/2 margin, to win the championship. Bacon got an added bonus as Ledyard finished second, ahead of Waterford, which also gave the Bobcats the ECC Large Division championship.
“When someone hits a home run, it just has to clear the fence, it doesn’t have to be 500-feet, so six or 60 — it doesn’t matter,” Voiland said about the narrow margin of victory.
Bacon went into the championship round with an eight-point lead over Ledyard, but both teams had four wrestlers make it to the finals. Ledyard suffered a blow, however, when Nick Polonsky couldn’t wrestle at 189-pounds due to a neck injury suffered earlier in the day.
Bacon extended its lead by four points when Ryan Quinn scored an 8-5 decision over Killingly’s Tylor Herrick in the opening match of the championship round.
“I hate it,” Quinn said of being the first out on the mat, “but hopefully it got the rest of the kids in the finals a little loosened up.”
Like Quinn, who won the 112-pound ECC title a year ago, Ledyard’s Caleb Morth captured his second straight ECC individual title by taking the 145-pound championship with a pin 4-minutes, 30-seconds into his match with Montville’s Dan Alger.
“It was definitely a goal, to win the ECCs and hopefully, the (State) Open — those were my big goals,” Morth, a senior, said.
Morth’s pin also pulled the Colonels within six of the Bobcats. A Shane Sullivan pin could have tied that up at 152, but the junior had a battle with Woodstock’s Brohen Krsulic and had to settle for a 7-2 win by decision.
Waterford’s John Millaras helped Ledyard as he defeated Bacon’s Dan Thompson at 160, 7-1, to set up what turned out to be the decisive battle three matches later. Bacon’s Webster was pitted against Ledyard junior Alex Lawrence, and everybody in the gym knew what was on the line.
“That’s a whole lot of pressure for a high school kid,” Voiland said. “The season comes down to that on both sides of the house.”
The importance wasn’t lost on Webster.
“I was just like, ‘Oh my God, I have to win this thing.’ It was overwhelming, but I knew I had beaten him before and I knew I could do it again.”
Voiland didn’t like what he saw early on as Webster took a 2-1 lead, but then found himself on his back for only the second time this season in the second period. He escaped and then changed his strategy. Webster stayed on his feet the rest of the match, scored a takedown, let Lawrence get back up and scored on another takedown. The strategy was repeated four times in the third period and produced a 13-6 win.
“I knew it was coming,” Ledyard coach Jason Lanoue said. “I knew exactly it was going to be the strategy. I was loving it because the Bacon coaches had kind of forgotten about it in the beginning, but when (Lawrence) hit those two dangerous rolls, they were like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, we told you to let (Lawrence) up last time.’ ”
The team that was on top last week, Waterford, ended up going home empty-handed as the Lancers finished in third with 182 points.
“It’s a disappointment — clearly a disappointment,” Waterford coach Chris Gamble said. “You’re hoping that you will get some 3, 4, 5, 6th-place finishes and we didn’t get them. It’s a tough tournament and that’s what happens, we didn’t make our breaks.”
The other team that went home with a title was Montville as it finally untangled itself from Killingly and beat the Redmen by seven, 133 1/2 to 126 1/2, to capture the Small Division crown. The two teams had to go to criteria in their two regular-season encounters.
“We’ve been sick all week, and we didn’t wrestle as well as we should have, but my compliments to our kids because they came through in the end and did enough to win the ECC outright,” Montville coach Gary Wilcox said.
East Lyme senior Ryan Clarke, the 140-pound champion, was named the Most Outstanding wrestler in the tournament.