LISBON — Lisbon/Oak Hill’s Dan Bolton added an exclamation point early on senior night Wednesday when, in his first wrestling match of the evening, he turned the dial on his win counter to triple digits and joined two of his teammates in the 100-win club.
Bolton defeated Lincoln Academy’s Chris Popp to win the 100th match of his career at a quad meet that also included Mountain Valley and Monmouth.
“He’s one of our seniors — him, Jack (Tibbetts) and Cam (Bourget),” Lisbon coach Ted Albasini said. “Those other two have gotten their 100th win, and Dan got his today. His freshman year he was ineligible for half the season, so to get his 100th is a big deal.
“He’s a good kid, his brother wrestled with us and he is out-doing his brother. Last year he made it to New England’s as a junior. I’m proud of him, he works hard and busts his butt.”
Later in the night, after Monmouth and Lincoln had finished and left the gym, Bolton engaged in perhaps the match of the night against another member of the 100-win club, Mountain Valley’s Anthony Mazza, who jumped up a weight class to take on Bolton.
Bolton took a 4-2 lead midway through the second round against Mazza, but Mazza took over late in the round and held on for a 7-6 victory in the third.
“With Mazza, I have wrestled him before at the Madison meet a couple weeks ago,” Bolton said. “That was an exhibition. He is a weight class below so I wasn’t too worried about it. I am not too upset about losing, he’s really good so I am not going to beat myself up.”
The match spurred the crowd to be even more engaged than it already was.
“It was really fun,” Bolton said. “I had a lot of parents here, other people had parents, I had friends here and a few other people from the community. It was a good turnout and it was nice to get a decent crowd. Usually with wrestling we only usually get 20 people. It was a nice feeling to have a crowd to hear.”
Mountain Valley coach Gary Dollof called Mazza’s performance against Bolton a “great win” but said there is work to do.
“(We) need to work on conditioning as a team, but it was three good team wins getting ready for league tournament,” Dollof said.
The Falcons won all three of their team matches against Lisbon/Oak Hill, Monmouth and Lincoln, all three blowout wins helped by Mountain Valley’s higher number of wrestlers.
Monmouth had a couple sick wrestlers and Lisbon/Oak Hill had one of its seven wrestlers out with a concussion. Still, the Falcons dominated in points and had some great individual performances.
Jonah Byam and Max Merrill each earned a first-round pin against Lincoln, while Nathan Leclair and Hamidou Haidara earned first-round pins against Lisbon/Oak Hill.
Monmouth had solid showings throughout, with both Ostin Smith and Lucas Hand earning two pin-down wins. Smith and Hand both turned around their performances from a couple weeks ago at Madison, and head coach Shawn Schultz took notice.
“Ostin is doing fantastic and he won his matches today,” Schultz said. “Lucas turned his match around today, he lost last week, so it was awesome to see.”
Lisbon/Oak Hills Tibbetts and Potvin had solid days, earning second-round wins against their Lincoln Academy counterparts. Potvin also defeated Byam.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
