The562’s wrestling coverage for the 2023-24 school year is sponsored by Emigh Dental Care.
The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly is sponsored by Bryson Financial
The562’s coverage of Millikan athletics in the 2023-24 school year is sponsored by Curtis Boyer.
On the boys’ side, Millikan opened up with a 48-26 victory to open Moore league play as the Rams look for their 14th consecutive title.
Poly’s lightweights gave the Jackrabbits a 17-0 lead thanks to Knox Espinoza, Eduardo Sandoval and Nathan Itchon.
But, with a roster featuring multiple reigning champs and CIF placers, the Rams stormed back winning 7 of the last 8 matches by pin.
“A lot of our wrestlers kind of wrestled up today,” Millikan coach Blake Lovato said. “No one really wrestled at what their actual weight is going to be.”
Whether outside of their weights or not, Rams finished the match strong to comfortably win the match thanks to wins by Tannor Costello, Diego Aguirre, Aidan Gomez, Trey Culwell and Chris Angulano.
Poly Wins Girls’ Thriller
With some help from her teammates, senior Raven Ross found herself in a position to help the Long Beach Poly girls wrestling team win their Moore League opener against Millikan.
Trailing 39-36, Ross came up with a huge 4-3 against the Rams’ Helen Martinez to tie the dual at 39 and force the victory to be decided by tiebreakers.
After going through several tiebreaking scenarios, the Jackrabbits were awarded the victory due to being the team that gave up the least number of forfeits.
“I had to bring it home,” Ross said. “I did get a little nervous, but all that matters is that I brought it home. It feels nice to finally get something that we’ve always wanted. We always failed to get it, but not it’s like every year we always get closer and closer and we finally made it the year.”
Early in the dual, it looked like Millikan was going to cruise to a league victory after jumping out to a 22-0 lead after wins by Madison Baxter, Jaelen Escala, Nohea Booth and Nataly Cardenas – three coming by pin.
“That win was huge,” Poly coach Ken Lee said. “We have a lot of girls and we lost a lot of talent this year. But we have a lot of freshmen filling in big shoes.”
But, the Jackrabbits came right back winning the next three matches including an impressive pin by Daliah Preciado to give Poly a 24-22 lead over Millikan.
However, Millikan answered right back taking a 39-33 lead heading into the final match of the night.
“It was a disappointing loss on our part,” Millikan coach Jacob Lovato said. “But this is what the girls revolution is about. We had the crowd up and this reminds me of old school Lakewood-Millikan rivalry from the early 2000s. Reliving that again is what drives me to coach every day.”
