WIESBADEN ARMY AIRFIELD, Germany — More than 200 matches into the two-day 2011 DODDS Europe high school wrestling championships, two things were clear Friday afternoon.

One, there is a lot of wrestling left. And two, repeat team titles won’t come easily for defending champions Patch of Division I, Baumholder of Division II and Sigonella of Division III.

Baumholder and Sigonella struggled to stay above .500 in individual matches in Round 1 of this pool event with crossover semifinals — Baumholder went 3-3 and Sigonella 3-4. Patch, last year’s runaway winner among the big-enrollment schools, went just 25-17 in the first two rounds.

One of Baumholder’s victories, however, was a quality one posted by 112-pounder Andrew Hooks. He pinned previously unbeaten Omri Izhaki of the American Overseas School of Rome in his opening match.

“We don’t have as many people as we did last year,” Hooks said of his six-man squad, “but everyone is working hard.”

No Buc was working harder than Hooks, who registered falls in his first three bouts. He handed Ishaki his first defeat of the season despite having never seen his Italy-based foe before.

“I try to go off my strengths,” he said about his strategy for tackling the unknown. “I’m faster than most guys, so I use my speed. Against guys who like to tie up, I try to stay away.”

Hooks indicated his pinning combination was a product of opportunism.

“I think he was trying to get up,” Hooks said. “I used a kind of arm-bar move. I heard him say, ‘I can’t breathe,’ so I moved my legs to try to let him get his breath.”

His breath, perhaps — “You don’t want to choke a guy out,” Hooks said — but not his equilibrium. Hooks registered the fall in 4 minutes, 54 seconds.

The fall Ozhaki surrendered was the beginning of a grim day for teams south of the Alps. In the first round, Italy-based schools lost 28 times, 23 of them by pins, and won only 10 times, four of them against fellow Italy-based opponents.

For all that, the top wrestler of the day came from the Mediterranean District. Rota’s one-man gang, Keaton Regenor, a 125-pound sophomore transfer from Virginia state champion Colonial Forge High School, posted a technical fall in his opening match, accepted a forfeit in his second, then outgunned Kaiserslautern’s Stephen Hook 20-3 for his second T-fall of the day.

“We’re trying for technical falls to get Keaton ready to wrestle a full match,” father Jim Regenor said. “We could have had falls several times but wanted to keep the match going.”

The younger Regenor demonstrated the truth of his father’s words in the opening moments of his match against Hook. He turned a single-leg takedown into a five-point move by putting Hook on his back with 1:25 to go in the opening period, and made it 8-0 with another near fall off a boa-constrictor-tight figure-four just seconds later.

Regenor the wrestler said he wasn’t fazed when he discovered he’d be going from a wrestling room filled with Virginia state champion contenders to one at Rota that contained none — except sailor volunteer Matt Tugg, a former high school wrestler in Oregon.

“It didn’t stop me,” Regenor said of his new situation. “I was going to wrestle no matter what.”

Regenor guaranteed himself a place in Saturday morning’s cross-over semifinals with his second dominating win. But neither he nor his father is taking anything for granted.

“The thing about wrestling is that it’s all on the mat. Anyone is capable of pinning anyone else,” the elder Regenor said.

Matches begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, with the completion of Round 5 of the pool matches. At 11:30, the top two in each pool face off against their counterparts from the opposite pool in the semifinals. Saturday’s championship matches are scheduled for 3:30 p.m.

Admission to the tournament is $5 for adults and $3 for students.

bryanr@estripes.osd.mil

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