Wrestling team wins four matches

The Caribou varsity wrestling team continued its winning ways Saturday by traveling to Howland and defeating host Penobscot Valley High School, 41-21, as well as Washington Academy of East Machias, 54-12, before stopping both Hermon and Calais by identical 48-12 scores.
With the four victories, the Vikings ran their dual meet record to 16-1 on the season.    Senior captain Matt Manter, who wrestling up a weight class at 220 lbs. for a couple of bouts, looked very impressive defeating Justin Ringuette of PVHS by a technical fall score of 21-4 and pinning Washington Academy’s Vincent Tzeo. He was awarded forfeits against Calais and Hermon while competing at 195 lbs.
Just as impressive in wrestling at 285 lbs. was sophomore Colton Conley, who avenged an early-season loss to PVHS’s Benny Woodward by pinning him in 44 seconds of the first period.
“This past week, assistant coach Brendan Wood and I have been focusing on readjusting some takedown techniques especially designed for [Colton] and it paid off,” said Caribou head coach Chico Hernandez.
Rebecca King of Caribou  matched up against Hermon’s Karrie Burns in the 120 lb. division. Hernandez said King used some nice Greco-Roman technique to pin Burns.
The championship portion of the team’s schedule begins Saturday with the conference meet Saturday at Ellsworth and the third-year coach is excited to see how his team performs.
“Going into our final week of duals and heading into the PVC Championships, we are looking better in most weight classes but we are still waiting for a couple of wrestlers to get down a class, where they will be more competitive,” Hernandez said. “I like our chances going into the meet and with 16 schools wrestling in the conference, if everybody is on their game, we should bring back some medals and have some fun.”
Manter holds a 25-1 season record entering this week’s action. Jake Bither (170 lbs.) stands at 24-3, Axios Gerakaris (145) is 20-6, Conley 20-9, Kyle Morris (120) 19-4 and King 18-7.
Dustin DeMerchant (182) comes in with a 16-8 mark, with Nolan Powers (152) at 14-5, Eric Simon (138) 14-6 and Noah Cousins (106) at 11-8.