Heated Competition
In a dual match on Jan. 28, Aragon faced off against Mills High School. Unfortunately, by the end of the match, Aragon had lost a majority of the players’ individual matches, and it seemed Aragon’s wrestling team had lost against Mills. After the match, however, word got out that there may have been an inconsistency in Mills’ assignments to matches.
“There’s a rule that says whatever you weigh in at, you have to wrestle that weight class or one [weight class] above it,” said wrestling coach Steve Ratto. “There were five wrestlers who wrestled two weight classes up, which makes them ineligible: if they wrestled the match, that means that they have to forfeit the match. They won three of those five matches, and so in effect they are forfeiting the matches they had already won, which takes away 18 points and gives it to our team.”
These 18 points were enough to win the match against Mills and subsequently tie them for first place with the Burlingame wrestling team in the Peninsula Athletic League Regional Wrestling bracket.
Ratto added, “I’m disappointed that we won it that way, but you’ve got to play by the rules. There are rules for a reason.”
When asked of his opinion on how the Mills match may have gone if there had not been a roster mishap, senior Jetrho Mercado, a first-year wrestler, responded, “I don’t know, but we got some good wrestlers, they got some good wrestlers, so it would be toe to toe, but who knows who would win.”
On Tuesday, Jan. 31 in the Aragon Gym, Aragon faced off against Woodside in their final home game of the season. Woodside, with six wrestlers on their team and only four athletes that could wrestle at that match, could not contend against Aragon’s team of over twenty wrestlers and had to forfeit the large majority of matches that they could not provide a wrestler for. This ensured a win for Aragon, and the only worry amongst the team before Tuesday’s meet was who was actually going to wrestle.
“Woodside doesn’t have that many wrestlers, so if I get a match, I get a match,” said JP Noda, a senior and second-year member of the team.
With Woodside forfeiting all matches they couldn’t wrestle and losing two of the four matches that they could, Aragon won their dual meet against Woodside In the region-wide brackets, the win put Aragon in first place at three wins and zero losses, ahead of Burlingame with two wins and one loss.
“We might go undefeated, which is something that hasn’t happened in a long time,” said Ratto, contemplating their Regional standings shortly after the win against Woodside. “We have two big matches, [with Capuchino on] Thursday and [Burlingame next] Tuesday, which I think is going to be exciting, I think [the team is] ready for it, and it’s been a long time since we’ve had that chance.”
Coach Ratto at the Helm
“I love coaching, it’s awesome,” said Ratto. “A lot of the kids don’t know what wrestling is when they start, and to see them get to this point where they know the moves and they know what they’re doing, that they’re able to think out on the mat and put things together, is exciting.”
“He’s cool,” said junior AJ Ramirez. “Being a physics teacher is perfect for wrestling: he knows balance!”
“[Ratto’s] a good coach, I like him,” said senior and co-team captain William Flowerday. “We had this other coach that just told us we could win all the time, but he didn’t say anything about our wrestlers. When Mr. Ratto thinks that we have a hard match to wrestle with, he lets us know that the guy we’re wrestling is going to be a hard match; that we’re gonna have a run for our money.”
Ratto coaches a team of comrades, bound together in unison by wrestling, each player working off each other harmoniously. The team, fully comfortable with themselves, their teammates, and their surroundings, will playfully crack jokes at one another during practice, but will always take wrestling seriously and, when needed, will intensely focus all of their energy on it.
“Wrestling is team building,” continued Ramirez. “A lot of these guys I didn’t even know before but now we’re all like best friends.”
