The Falcons wrestling team continues to dominate this season with 48-0 home victory over the Rio Hondo Roadrunners on Wednesday, Oct. 26.

As the team moves closer to state, it looks forward to compete agaisnt Mt. SAC and gain another dominating win.

Coach Don Garriott was happy with the results of the event but didn’t think the team’s conditioning was up to par.

“They did a good job, [Rio Hondo] didn’t win a [single] match against us. Still not quite happy with where our conditioning is. It seemed as though some of our guys got tired.

Then again it’s kind of hard to get up for a team you’re supposed to beat. So, hopefully by next Wednesday, it [will be a little bit of a tougher] opponent so hopefully they’ll be amped up,” Garriott said.

Despite a few of the guys either went up a weight class or dropped a weight class, Garriott doesn’t believe it had anything to do with what he saw as a lack of conditioning.

The 197-pound freshmen David Van Weems was one of the victories at the Rio Hondo match. He was able to defeat opposing wrestler Andrew Ramos, who also happens to be ranked No. 3 in the state.

Van Weems was seemingly happy with his win and was not phased about Ramos’ high state ranking.

Van Weems said, “It’s just a ranking. For a lot of wrestlers [they’re like] ‘oh he’s racked!’ I don’t care. I just go out there and wrestle. Ranking is just some nerd’s opinion. So, I didn’t really care, I just went out and wrestled the way I wrestled.”

“Wrestling is like 50 percent muscle and 50 percent mental. It’s different for other teams, you go one on one[…] but if you go in with that mindset that ‘this guy is racked higher than me, oh no I’m scared’ the tiniest things add up,” he continued, “You won’t shoo, you won’t move, your feet will be sloppy, you’ll be all scared and skittish. You can’t go in like that. You gotta do you.”

One of the wrestlers who had to move up in weight class was, the 133-pound freshmen, Norberto Buenrostro.

After Coach Garriott told him that he would have to bump weight from 125 to 133 to compete, he said he was up to the challenge.

Buenrostro said, “Basically I just bumped up to 33. Coach said ‘hey you’re no longer going to 25 you’re going to 33. We want to give our 33-pounder a break’ so I stepped up to the challenge[…] I went out there confident, there wasn’t a big difference. I went out there ready to ground.”

The 285-pound freshmen David Zavala was one of the victors of the day who’s won came by pin fall.

Zavala expressed that the guy he wrestled that night was one that he had pinned before.

He said “I had pinned him before, so I was hoping I would do it [again] and I came out and got done. I feel pretty good.”

He continued, “He fought, it was a lot harder then the first time. He knew what was coming, he was trying to close the gap between us. It gets harder and harder. Everyone gets harder.”

All three of these men expressed that they are ready for Mt. SAC match which will take place Wednesday, Nov 2.