The Concord wrestling team’s performance at last weekend’s Division I championship was a bit of a letdown, but the Tide got some redemption at Saturday’s Meet of Champions.
Senior Kody Rashed pinned Timberlane’s Dom Pallaria with seven seconds remaining in the bout to win the MOC title in the 195-pound class, avenging his loss to Pallaria in the finals of the D-I tournament — also held at Londonderry High School — one week ago.
Rashed won all three of his matches by pin and was the only MOC champion to come out of the Capital Area, but several other grapplers finished in the top three to qualify for next weekend’s New England championships, which be held on Friday and Saturday in Providence, R.I.
Concord senior Hunter Jeffers also avenged a disappointing D-I performance. The unseeded Jeffers upset No. 2 Jason Canavan of Keene — the D-I 285-pound champion — in the quarterfinals with a 3-0 decision and defeated him again in the third-place bout, 5-1.
Jeffers went 4-1 on Saturday (two wins by pin, two by decision), his only loss coming to Milford’s Daniel DeBernardo in the semifinals — matching the third-place finish he also had at the D-I championship.
Tide senior Jaycee Haskell also went 4-1 and finished third at 220 to qualify for New Englands.
Haskell was unseeded for MOC, but took a commanding 9-0 lead before pinning No. 4 Owen McKinney of Mascoma Valley in the quarterfinals, dropped a 9-5 decision to top-ranked — and eventual champion — Cooper Kelley of Timberlane in the semis, but pulled off another upset over No. 3 Ben Kilgore of Nashua North (4-2 decision).
Haskell pinned Nashua North’s Toby Brown in the third-place bout.
The other Concord wrestler to place was sophomore Traevon Ling, who finished fifth at 113. Ling wasn’t seeded, but picked up two victories by pin over No. 3 Aemon Gauthier of Winnisquam — once in the quarterfinals and again in the fifth-place bout — to finish 2-2 at the tournament.
“We did a much better job preparing the kids and they wrestled well,” Concord coach Ham Munnell said. “We beat a lot of kids we lost to a week ago.”
Two other area wrestlers will join Concord’s contingent at New Englands — Bow sophomore Adler Moura and Kearsarge senior Evan Lombard — who both finished runner-up at MOC and were the D-III champions in their weight classes.
Third-seeded Moura won by pin in the round of 16, by major decision in the quarters and upset No. 2 TJ Labatte of Timberlane by pin in a close semifinal bout.
Moura lost to No. 1 Ryan O’Rourke of Salem by pin in the final.
The 160 class was mostly chalk, as No. 2 Lombard won two matches by pin to advance to the finals before losing to No. 1 Anthony Rousseau of Timberlane in a 14-2 major decision.
Timberlane won four titles, had two finalists and two third-place finishes to tally 262 points, easily topping the 36-team field.
Salem (190), Nashua South (126), Keene (111) and Concord (98) rounded out the top five team scores in the same order as last weekend’s D-I team standings.
Bow finished 16th with 37 points, also getting a sixth-place finish from junior Nick Wray at 145.
Lombard led Kearsarge to a tie with Raymond for 21st place with 27 points each, while freshman Gauthier’s sixth-place finish at 113 was the highest place for Winnisquam (25th, 15 points).
John Stark qualified three wrestlers, but did not pick up any victories.