Sanchez, Posadas fall in final match
| Sunday, Mar 08 2009 03:19 AM
Last Updated Wednesday, Mar 25 2009 06:16 PM
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Angel Posadas, Foothill
Angel Posadas of Foothill tries to take down Roger McCovey of Del Norte in the CIF heavyweight championship Saturday night.
A year ago, Ridgeview senior Javier Sanchez was about to become another of America's high-school dropouts.
Now he's got a statistic for you: No. 2 in the state of California.
Sanchez reached the 140-pound final at the CIF State Wrestling Championships on Saturday at Rabobank Arena, stunning state No. 2 Nicholas Sierra of Lemoore in the morning semifinals before losing the championship to Cody Rodebaugh of Felton-San Lorenzo Valley.
Sanchez was one of two second-place finishers from Kern County. Foothill's Angel Posadas lost in the heavyweight finals to Roger McCovey of Del Norte.
"He didn't get the fairy-tale ending, but you know, you're happy with the whole story," Ridgeview coach Tony Gonzalez said. "From the very beginning till the very end."
Sanchez attended Bakersfield High through last winter, when he took second for the Drillers at the prestigious Doc Buchanan Invitational. Shortly afterwards, though, he let his life get away from him.
"I basically stopped going to school for a good couple of months," Sanchez said. "I slipped. And I had to go to community school for months to make up all the credits."
He transferred to Ridgeview before this year, where he re-dedicated himself. He was undefeated through the SWYL championships, then slipped up three times at the Central Section's divisional and Masters meets, dropping him out of the state rankings as he came to Rabobank.
But immediately, he made clear that he was a force. He beat No. 8 Kyle Chene of Irvine in the first round and knocked off San Diego Section champion Josh Hotta of Vista in Friday's quarterfinals. This morning, he wrestled Sierra, one of the state favorites.
Behind 3-2, Sanchez nearly took down Sierra three or four times in the third period before finally getting him with less than 10 seconds on the clock, then hanging on for a 4-3 win.
"To tell you the truth, I don't know where that came from," Sanchez said. "I didn't have the energy, but it was there. I think God gave me the energy, because going into the third period, I was down."
Sanchez became the first Ridgeview wrestler to reach the state finals. There, he was the aggressor against Rodebaugh. That cost him early in the second period, when he shot and Rodebaugh sprawled and grabbed Sanchez's ankle and head. He locked up a nearside cradle and pinned the Ridgeview wrestler 22 seconds into the period.
"That's all he's been doing this whole tournament, and I knew it," Sanchez said. "But he got my ankle, and I don't know, I guess I started panicking a little bit."
Rodebaugh had pinned both Bakersfield's Jonah Cruz in the quarterfinals and defending state champion Vlad Dombrovskyy of Sacramento-Nacitas in the semifinals with the same move.
"It feels incredible," Rodebaugh said. "The quarters is when I really started going intense. Once I beat Jonah Cruz (No. 3 in the state, of Bakersfield), I said, 'I have to start doing this every time.'"
For Sanchez, though, the loss was less crushing and more thrilling, simply because he was under the lights in a state championship.
"I went through a lot of ups and downs, hit the bumps pretty hard," Sanchez said. "The thing that got me straightened out was my parents (Javier and Amanda). I always thought they were going to give up on me, but they never did. They were on me and on me, and senior year, I pulled it together."
Ten dollars is what kept Angel Posadas on the mat.
Foothill assistant coach Robert Pfeifle saw potential in Posadas as extremely raw freshman but couldn't keep him on the team. As a sophomore, Pfeifle enticed him to stay on team with a free meal if he could last a full season.
The meal more than fed the senior's improbable run from unranked and unheralded senior to a second-place state finish in the 285-pound class at the CIF Wrestling Championships on Saturday at Rabobank Arena.
"We definitely got our money's worth on that bet," said Foothill head coach Brad Hull, who admits to knowing about the bet but not finding out until much later.
Without a repertoire of first-place medals, Posadas wasn't given a chance against defending state champ and nationally ranked Roger McCovey of Crescent City-Del Norte. McCovey hadn't allowed a point to be scored against in his five previous matches and hadn't lost a match in more than two years.
Those statistics didn't intimidate Posadas before the match.
"I'm not suppose to be here," he said afterward. "He is. He ain't suppose to lose. I'm not, so I can do whatever I want."
For the first few seconds in the match, Posadas had the Rabobank crowd whispering in disbelief as he took control with a takedown for a 2-0 stunning lead.
"I shot on him. I was too low on my double and his just turned on it" said McCovey, who admitted to hearing the awe from the crowd as Posadas scored the takedown.
McCovey recovered and scored an escape point near the end of the first period. The Del Norte senior tied the match 8 seconds into the second period, and took the lead 17 seconds later with a takedown.
"The second shot, That boy is strong, he can drive," said Posadas as he described the point in the match when he knew he was in trouble. "I thought I was out, thought I was out, He kept coming."
Posadas scored an escape but McCovey took down the Foothill giant with 17 seconds left in the second to take a 6-3 lead.
McCovey turned and eventually pinned a visually drained Posadas 55 seconds in the third for the victory.
Posadas' success adds to a growing lore of the Foothill program. In Hull's first season with the program, Miguel Gutierrez captured the 145-pound title in 2001. The Trojans have had three other state placers since 2001, but none had reached the finals until Saturday.
"People don't know much about Foothill wrestling but we go as hard as anybody," Posadas said. "It's just not me, it's all my teammates. The coaches are in there sweating as much as we are."
A second-place medal for a kid that never wrestled until his sophomore season, imagine what might have been if he took that bet as a freshman.
Posadas doesn't want to think about it. This was a great week.
"It shows you don't have to be ranked to come and place in state," Posadas said. "It would have been better to win it but second place is better than nothing.
