Scotts Valley High School wrestlers are winning tournaments left and right these days.
The boys’ varsity wrestling team competed in the Apple Cider Classic tournament last weekend on Jan. 9 and 10, placing 11th out of 36 teams.
With only four members on the team, three emerged victorious. Doug Peyser won first place, weighing in at 185 pounds, Michael Sandoval scored second at 132 pounds, and Nick Reyes placed third in the 145-pound weight division.
“These guys are invested from day one in junior high all the way through high school,” said Varsity Wrestling Coach Jared Norman, adding that all that work has paid off.
The girls’ wrestling team attended the ASICS Napa Valley Invitational last weekend as well.
Over the course of the tournament, the team scored 15th place out of 112 teams. Dominique “Domino” Parrish scored first at 115 pounds, and Katherine Rossiter finished fourth at 160 pounds
Girls Wrestling Coach Mike Parrish said that the Napa tournament is one of the hardest in the county with 508 girls competing — including state champions and national-level placers.
“We hope to win CCS (Central Coast Section Championship) this year, although we are going to be up against a couple of big, tough teams,” said Parrish. “Then I hope to take as many girls as I possibly can to the state tournaments to see how well we can do.”
There is an explosion of girls getting involved in wrestling, he said. There has been a 60 percent increase in the number of female wrestlers for the southern part of California, and a 30 percent increase for the northern part, year over year.
“I went down to La Puente and I looked at the team rosters as we were getting ready to go and there were 20 schools down there that have more than 10 girls on their team out of the 90 some schools that were there,” Parrish said “That’s crazy, that’s never happened before.”
Both teams are about two-thirds way through the season, but some of the wrestlers wrestle year-round with club wrestling.
The 13-member girls wrestling team will be competing at the Terra Nova High School TN Seaside Showdown this coming weekend on Jan. 17 and the varsity boys will be participating in the Jim Root Classic at Prospect High on that same day.
“We want to do the best we can, I just tell the kids to wrestle their best 6 minutes; it’s not about winning or losing,” said Norman.
