Patrick Henry joins over seventy teams in its quest for state championship. The way wrestling does it’s qualification is that wrestling has a CIF Champion in every division. Placers from every divisional wrestle for a single Section Championship with the top four from the section going on to wrestle every other section qualifier at what is called the CIF Masters Championships. Thus California boys high school westling only has one state champion at every weight class,which makes it a very tough state to be a state champion.
Most sports power-rank their divisions, but wrestling sets their divisions by school population. This means that you might have a tough school like Brawley and La Costa at Division 3 and a school with a weaker program at Division 1. This year however, Division 1 is one of the toughest, with state-ranked Poway, Granite Hills and Rancho Bernardo being three of the 19 teams present.
This is why Patrick Henry’s performance this year is all the more exciting. Last year Patrick Henry was 14th with only five placers and three wrestlers in top 8 who qualified for the Masters tournament. This year however, the young team brought nine wrestlers, eight of whom placed and six qualified for the Masters tournament, seven when you add Aubrey Lund, Patrick Henry’s very first female wrestler qualifier from the Girls Wrestling team.
This yer the top placer was Junior Ethan Vinoray (126lb). Ethan qualified for the State Championships as a Freshman but missed last season due to an injury. He placed 3rd on Saturday losing to the second seed from Granite Hills 9-1 in Semi Finals.
Freshman Caleb Arenz was a middle school wrestler and placed 6th in a very competitive 175lb class. First-year wrestler sophomore Eli Roy also placed 6th at 150lb. Senior Reid Muscat at 165lb, sophomore Justin Willard (157lb) and Junior Van Alvarez (190lb) all placed 8th. Justin Willard was a JV wrestler most of the year but due to a teammate injury ended up at the CIF tournament. Unseeded he qualified when he got a takedown on an opponent in the last second of his match.
Junior and first-year wrestler Zakariah Safi was 11th at 285lb and Sophomore Nicholas Arambula was 10th at 138lb.
On Friday and Saturday the seven Patrick Henry Wrestlers will compete at Christian HS in El Cajon for the chance to qualify for the CIF State Champions.
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