Herndon Wrestling Quartet Places at Battle at the Bridge

From Herndon High School: Four Hornets turned in strong showings at the 2016 Battle at the Bridge with senior Cole Cooksey, junior Chris Estrada, freshmen K.T. Elston, and sophomore Trey Passmore all placing.

The annual event, hosted by Woodbridge High School, showcased some of the top talent in Virginia and included teams from Pennsylvania and Connecticut. As a team, Herndon placed 20th out of 32 teams with only a partial line-up.

Cooksey advanced to the 220 lbs. quarter finals after pinning Gar-Field’s Bryan Melendez. He dropped his next match to Osbourn Park’s Luke Nitowski by a tight 5-4 decision. Cooksey was able to rebound from the loss, and fought his way back through the consolation bracket with three straight wins that included a pin over North Stafford’s Carlos Herring, a pin over Owen Zechman of Midd-West (PA), and a 4-1 decision over Potomac’s Christian Salazer-Brit. Cooksey would wrestle Nitowski of Osbourn Park again in the consolation finals in another tight match, this time losing 3-1 to settle for fourth place.

Estrada advanced to the heavyweight quarter finals with a pin over Midd-West’s (PA) Owen Hosler before being pinned by Osbourn Park’s Phillip Pullen. Estrada faced Jalen Moffatt of Massoponax in his first consolation match that concluded with a wild ending. Trailing by a large margin late in the match, and with his opponent playing defense, Estrada was able to secure a double-leg takedown which led to a pin with only a few seconds left in the match to earn the thrilling victory. He followed up that performance with a 6-4 decision over McLean’s Will Salt to advance to the consolation semi-finals. Estrada dropped a tough 1-0 decision to Woodbridge’s Feliz Daddub to move down to the 5th place match. There is faced off against Millbrook’s Tavon Blowe and lost another tight 1-0 decision to earn sixth place.

Elston lost his opening match to Woodbridge’s Yousuf Hammad by a 14-4 major decision, but was able to win three of his next four matches to take seventh place at 113 lbs. His wins included a high-scoring 12-10 decision over Colghan’s Keshav Shah, and pins over North Stafford’s Tommy Tennyson and Langley’s Tyler Chung to close out the tournament.

Passmore advanced to the 160 lbs. quarter finals with a 14-1 major decision over North Stafford’s Josh Pope and an 8-3 decision over McLean’s Saeybul Perez. He faced the number one seed from Xavier (CT) Ryan Devivo in his next bout. The match was 2-1 going into the second period, when there was a flurry of action and Passmore got caught in a headlock and was pinned. Passmore followed that match with a first period pin over Osbourn’s Gerdi Mouvi in the consolation bracket. Then he dropped his next two matches to settle for eighth place.

The Hornets will travel to Owings, Maryland this weekend to compete in the Patriot Classic at Northern High School before getting into their dual meet portion of their schedule next week. They will participate in a “Beauty and the Beast” wrestling-gymnastics event at Robinson Secondary School on Wednesday, January 11 to kick off their conference meets. The event will feature both the wrestling and girls gymnastics teams from Robinson, Oakton, and Herndon all competing at the same time. Action is set to start at 6pm.

Photo credit: Bob Elston