Mounts claim sixth place at annual Duals

All things considered, Ephrata performed fairly well in its first action of the season this past Saturday when the Mounts hosted the annual Ephrata Duals Tournament.

Already hit with some key injuries, the Mounts went out and won a pair of matches to finish 2-3 on the afternoon. In the team standing, Ephrata placed sixth overall, falling to Biglerville 46-30 in the fifth-place match.

Ephrata’s Bobby Nye (top) works for control during the Ephrata Duals this past weekend. (Photo by Stan Hall)

“Overall I was pleased with our performances,” Ephrata Coach Josh Clair said, summing up his team’s day. “It is a tough way to start the year with five duals, but the guys did some good things. We did have five guys without any varsity experience step in a wrestle. Of course, we did do things that we need to improve on, but that is to be expected for your first competition of the year. We had made some changes to the line-up due to injuries, but guys stepped in and wrestled hard.”

The Mounts opened the tournament with a 45-30 victory over Columbia. After losses to both Downingtown East (74-3) and Mifflin County (57-22), Ephrata rebounded to defeat Daniel Boone by a score of 45-33 to advance to the fifth-place match. Unfortunately, Biglerville built a big 34-9 lead before the Mounts closed strong by winning four of the final six bouts.

Individually, senior Cameron Eisenhauer (220), along with lightweights Joey Sarmento and freshman Austin Jones, led the way for Ephrata. Eisenhauer went 4-1 on the day with all of his wins coming by falls. Sarmento was 3-1 while Jones matched Eisenhauer with a 4-1 afternoon, which included a pair of falls.

“We know what we have in guys like Cam and Joey,” Clair said. “They both are in the varsity line-up for the third year and are team captains. They went out and performed as expected. They still have some things to clean-up, but all in all they had pretty good days. Austin Jones is the unknown of the group outside of the team. This is only his third year wrestling and he wrestled 80 pounds last year in middle school. He has worked his tail off to get up over 100 pounds to compete this year as a freshman. He has so much talent and potential to do great things. I also have to point out the performance of Dakota Rohrbaugh, who is one of our sophomores. He finished 3-2 on the day with two falls. His third win came by way of overtime rideout. In that match he could have given up numerous times, but he wrestled as hard as he could to pick up the win.”

Downingtown East captured the tournament championship with a convincing 51-16 victory over runner-up Garden Spot.

Ephrata will see more tournament action this coming weekend when the Mounts head to Mid-Penn country to compete in the Carlisle Invitational, which will be held Friday (4 p.m.) and Saturday (9 a.m.). The Mounts’ first regular-season dual meet will be next Tuesday night at EHS when they host Garden Spot at 7 p.m.

As for Cocalico, the Eagles were slated to travel to Donegal for a dual meet Tuesday but that match was postponed due to the weather. The Eagles will compete in the Conrad Weiser Tournament on Saturday before traveling to Manheim Central next Tuesday for a key Section Two showdown beginning at 7 p.m.