Lackey, North Point finish in top-5 at SMAC wrestling tournament

“It feels great. I’ve been working hard for this,” he said after earning a 10-4 decision against Chopticon’s Greg Griffith in the final. “I cracked down on myself this week, but I’ve been working hard for this all year. I’m trying to do well at states and at regions.”

Crowley’s title was but a small piece of a dominant Leonardtown showing at the annual conference gathering, as the Raiders won six of the 14 brackets to claim the team championship. Leonardtown accumulated 240 points to comfortably outdistance runner-up Huntingtown, which scored 204.5. Huntingtown entered this year’s tournament as the defending conference tournament champion.

“It means everything to me,” Crowley said of the team title. “That’s my team. I try to lead them to do things. We grind in the practice room.”

Lackey’s 157 points earned the Chargers a third-place finish, up five spots from a year ago. North Point finished in fourth place with 155, while Great Mills rounded out the top five with 150.

But the tournament belonged to Leonardtown, which had had a finalist in half of the weight classes. Joining Crowley as individual champions were Matt Oh (106 pounds), Garrett Lee (113), Sean Vosburgh (120), Brian Bieshelt (132) and John Podsednik (170).

Podsednik, who will carry a still-unblemished record into this weekend’s Class 4A-3A East Region tournament at Severna Park High School, won by fall in his quarterfinal and semifinal matches before winning by forfeit in the 170-pound final.

Bieshelt defeated Patuxent’s Ashton Stuckey by a 10-4 decision at 132, while Vosburgh defeated Northern’s Peter Ervin by technical fall at 120. Lee pinned Wilfred Vergara of Great Mills at 113, while Oh kicked off the finals with a 6-0 decision against Northern’s Dylan Montgomery at 106. Oh had come up on the short end against Montgomery and his semifinal opponent, North Point’s Kielin Huff, in previous matches, making the end result on Saturday all the more rewarding.

“I was really, really nervous for my semifinals and finals matches,” Oh said. “I was expecting to wrestle [Huff] in the finals, but I ended up wrestling [Montgomery]. Those guys are really good, but I fought hard.”

Huntingtown claimed four titles, with Josh Stokes (152), Dakota Cram (182), Joe Murray (195) and Joe Bannister-Pesce (220) each winning their respective brackets. Bannister won by fall against Lackey’s Brandon Ream, while Murray needed just 27 seconds to polish off Great Mills’ Will Doughty in their 195-pound final. Cram also won by fall against North Point’s Paullo Bonilla, while Stokes pinned La Plata’s Owen Butler.

For Stokes, who finished as a state runner-up to Centennial’s Jason Kraisser in the 4A-3A 145-pound class a year ago, the conference tournament simply marked the first step in what he hopes will be a rematch with Kraisser at this year’s state tournament.

“It was good, but my end result is to beat Jason Kraisser,” he said. “That’s what I’m going for.”

Fynn Yankanich and Kaleb Dolina each picked up championships for Northern. Yankanich defeated Huntingtown’s Jackson Cramer by a 10-6 decision in the 126-pound final, while Dolina took a 13-4 major decision from Lackey’s Brandon Jordan at 145.

Rounding out the champions were Calvert’s Matt Davis and North Point’s Notah McCabe. Davis won by fall at 138, pinning Leonardtown’s Finn Eskeland at the 1 minute 9 second mark, while McCabe closed out the tournament with a first-period pin of Huntingtown’s Jacob Munoz.

“Everyone put so much work into this,” McCabe said. “I could really tell with some of the wrestlers I went against, Jacob especially at the end, they were all amazing. This is because of some of the work I did in the offseason.”

Twitter: @cfhphilly