LOWER LAKE >> High school, middle school or club, the Southshore is a wrestling hotbed right now.
Konocti won a second straight team title last week at the Lake County Junior High Athletic League (LCJHAL) wrestling championships at Terrace Middle School in Lakeport.
“We’ve won two in a row, just like the high school team,” Konocti head coach Danny Cuellar said of the back-to-back Coastal Mountain Conference championships won by the Lower Lake High School squad under head coach Ed Fuchs. “We took 15 wrestlers to the tournament and they all won a medal.”
That windfall of medals included firsts for Mario Cuellar (88-96 pounds), Kenya Artisco (101), Tristan Floyd (104), Matthew Kincaid (112), J.J. Cushman (118), Cole Doud (142), Aries Brooke (155) and Alex Castillo (heavyweight).
Along with the eight first-place medals, the Konocti squad added four second-place medals and three thirds. Second-place medalists were Trevor Wilson, whose only loss came to teammate Kincaid, Nick Newell, Gavin Watson and Jacob Billings. Third-place medals went to Madison Rowe, Isaac Huffman and Joseph Hughes.
The LCJHAL tournament is open to sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.
“We’ve got a lot of eighth-graders this year,” Cuellar said.
The secret to Konocti’s recent success?
“I keep it simple for them,” Cuellar said of his wrestlers. “I teach them one or two takedown moves, a couple of moves to get off the bottom, and two or three ways to pin an opponent.”
Many of his wrestlers will bolster an already strong and young high school program at Lower Lake beginning with the 2016-17 school year, according to Cuellar.
