WIESBADEN ARMY AIRFIELD, Germany — Three first-round falls, two of them by wrestlers from the remotest school represented at the two-day DODDS-Europe high school wrestling championships, demonstrated Friday that anything’s possible on the mat.
Incirlik’s Cays Moore, who came into this 163-wrestler tournament with a 0-0 record, and his teammate, Marcus White, opened by pinning the first wrestlers they faced.
“It felt good,” Moore, a hockey player, said of pinning Bitburg’s top-seeded L.J. Downey at the 3:40 mark of their 145-pound match with a head-and-arm move.
It was a sentiment shared by Marcus White, who decked his man, Keyth Robinson of Aviano, with a half-nelson 1:10 into their 171-pound opener.
White and Moore, two-thirds of Incirlik’s contingent here, don’t have the experience one would presume is necessary to pin a couple of Europe’s best wrestlers. White is even shorter on experience than Moore, who wrestled last year but didn’t qualify for this event.
And Incirlik’s season consists of two meets: hosting and visiting Ankara.
Both wrestlers, however, credited their volunteer coaches for preparing them to face opponents who routinely wrestle four times each Saturday.
“Our volunteers are top-notch,” Moore said of the soldiers and airmen who train and condition the Hodjas well enough that White could say, “We’ll be able to keep up with them.”
Besides, White added, “It’s not experience that counts. It’s determination.”
That’s a theory borne out by Kaiserslautern 119-pounder Stephen Hook, who pinned previously unbeaten Marco Gonzalez of SHAPE.
“He was on top,” Hook said of Gonzalez, a wrestler Hook said dominated him in a regular-season match. “I partially rolled him and squeezed through and got the fall.”
Hook said he was in a similar position during an earlier loss to Gonzalez, “but I couldn’t roll through. This time, I squeezed as hard as I could.”
Both Incirlik wrestlers loss in Round 2, although they can draw some comfort from the meet structure, which advances the top two finishers in each pool to Saturday’s semifinals. Depending on the results of his Rounds 3-5 matches, Moore could find himself with another shot at unbeaten Andres Nanez of Heidelberg.
“He’s good,” said Moore, who trailed Nanez just 4-1 after two periods Friday before dropping an 11-3 major decision. “I’ll have to go back and try harder.”
White also faced a tough second-round foe. Jason Pinnow of Patch, who ran his record to 20-0 with a first-round victory, pinned White in 2:31.
Hook, however, continued his roll, pinning Vilseck’s Jared Cooper in 1:07 in Round 2.
As big as Hook’s upset of Gonzalez was, it wasn’t the biggest shocker of the day. That one came at 112, when Ramstein’s ninth-seeded Christian Turner upset 2009 103-pound king A.J. Remo of Kaiserslautern, 6-2.
And that was just the beginning of the bad news for Remo: Marco Montero of Sigonella pinned him in 3:53 in Round 3.
Previously unbeaten Vincent Alonso of Brussels learned Friday there are limits to determination. After winning his opening 125-pound match over Neil Navarra of Naples, Alonso, who ran his record to 20-0 with the victory, was diagnosed with pneumonia and had to medically default.
“He won that match on instinct,” said Brussels coach Joe Fiedler. “His heart rate was 120 after just walking to the clinic. Imagine what it was on the mat.”
