Sonoma’s Bartolome, Winslow carry the weight of team’s wrestling season

It was an individually triumphant week for Sonoma Valley High School varsity wrestlers junior Noah Bartolome and freshman Tyler Winslow, who dominated all the opponents they faced in a Sonoma County League dual match and San Rafael’s The Pound Invitational.

But Sonoma’s wrestling team fared less well, dropping a disheartening SCL clash in Sebastopol on Thursday when what they really needed was a win to remain on the heels of first-place Healdsburg in the SCL standings.

Despite Bartolome’s second-round pinning of Theo Kolybbakof at 195 pounds, and Winslow’s 12-1 major-decision victory over Cosmo Hahn at 170, Sonoma couldn’t close out the bouts it was about to win, and ended up dropping a 47-31 decision to the Tigers.

The only other Dragon dual-match winners against Analy were senior David Price’s second-round pinning of Mari Mendoza at 152 pounds; sophomore Dominico Biaggi’s 10-3 decision over Dustin Blumenthal at 145; and sophomores Henry (Darnell) Sazuma and Valentino Battaglini by way of forfeits at 160 and 220, respectively.

Sustaining Sonoma’s losses to the Tigers were senior Brandon Ruiz’s pinning by Elan Seabourne at 182 pounds; sophomore Dean Dunham’s pinning by Alex Perreira at 220; frosh David Bosshard’s 16-1 to Trevor Vegan at 106; frosh Macklyn Liss’ pinning by Dalton Gavriloff at 113; frosh Andrew Beatty’ pinning by Justin Adams at 120; and frosh Ryan Sherwood pinning by Ben Talcott at 132.

On Saturday the Dragons wrestled in San Rafael’s annual “The Pound” tournament and battled to an impressive fifth-place finish out of the 24-team field, which included SCL rivals Healdsburg, Petaluma and Analy, all of whom ended up behind Sonoma in the final standings.

Building on strong individual showings over their SCL Analy foes, Bartolome and Winslow led the Dragons to their tourney fifth-place finishing with gold-medal performances.

Winslow and Bartolome each posted a first-place 3-0 tournament record at 160 and 182 pounds, respectively, and Sonoma teammate Biaggi earned a fifth-place tourney finish at 145 in The Pound tourney.

The Dragons have a league bye this week before wrapping up their SCL dual-match season at Petaluma on Wednesday, Feb. 10. Meantime they will compete in the Redwood Empire Classic in Ukiah on Saturday, Feb. 6.