Oakton Wrestling Celebrates Senior Night

The Oakton High wrestling team started its night celebrating the seniors, but ended with a disappointing loss to the Centreville Wildcats 42-21 on Wednesday at home.

Five Oakton wrestlers — Eddie Gerow, Luis Rivera, Alex Borges, Matt Newman and Spencer Conley — won their matches.

The Cougar squad has been hovering around a .500 record all season, head coach Eric Gibbons said, and that shows him the team has potential to do well in the postseason. With two weeks and two regular season matches still ahead to prepare for the Concorde District tournament, Gibbons thinks they can improve enough to stay competitive.

"We've been getting better as the season's gone on. We've got a couple weeks left and hopefully we can continue to get better moving forward into the district tournament," Gibbons said. "We have a good chance of turning things up and having a good showing at districts."

Gibbons said Wednesday night's loss highlights a major lesson the Cougars will have to master before heading into districts: Take advantage of opportunities.

"When we put ourselves in a good position to do big things, we have to do them. Tonight [Centreville] won every close match," Gibbons said. "We had opportunities to score in those matches and didn’t. That was the difference tonight."

Though wrestling can often be treated like an individual sport, the Oakton team has tried to hold on to a team mentality as much as the sport allows.

"The guys are pretty good about supporting each other. It’s all about helping the guy next to you get better," Gibbons said. 

The Cougars next face Chantilly at 6 p.m. Jan. 25.