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Ramirez: Back-to-back gold

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RICK FULLER, Hernando Today correspondent

Published: December 5, 2007

INVERNESS - Central High's wrestling team traveled to Inverness for the all-day Ed Kilpatrick Classic and demonstrated it can grapple with the best of them.

Sophomore Vince Ramirez made a statement that he should be considered for a top seeding in the Dec. 7-8 Kiwanis Invitational after capturing the 135-pound weight class.

Ramirez finished the day with a team-high four wins in four matches, including a pin. The second-year grappler followed his individual win at the Nov. 17 Alan Solomon Classic at CHS with his second gold medal effort at Citrus High behind a 12-5 decision over Deltona High's Pierce Acosta.

"I just enjoy the sport and I want to be good in it," said Ramirez. "I don't want to be mediocre.

"I was always like a contact type person. I like that mano-a-mano type stuff. It's just an aggressive sport. I like it. I pretty much want to be aggressive, and play my game and not his, and take the lead. Once you take the lead, it gives you a lot more options."

Supple: third

Bear teammate Kenny Supple should have been seeded third, but in a tournament snafu he was placed on the same side of the bracket as the No. 1 seed and competed before anyone noticed the error.

Supple ended up navigating his way through the loser's bracket and did so in fine fashion winning the consolation bracket en route to a third-place finish.

"The first match just didn't go the way I wanted it to go," said Supple. "I had to regain my focus and I had to wrestle my way, just focus and set up my moves and just wrestle as hard as I could to come back."

About the pin, Supple said, "I saw him getting weaker as the match went on, and he put himself in a position, so I just took the cradle and I rocked back with it and flipped him to his back."

Supple was able to punch himself through, said Head Coach Roy Reyes.

"True to his seed, which was No. 3, even though Citrus messed up in where they placed him in the bracket, he was resilient and came back and was able to earn his third place," Reyes said. "Give props to Kenny."

Bears: 8th overall

As a team, Central placed eighth out of 17 mat teams from around the state, including perennial contenders and tournament winners, like Green Cove Springs-Clay, Ridgeview, New Port Richey-Gulf and tournament host, Inverness-Citrus High School.

Second-year coach Reyes was happy with his team, and confident this is just the beginning.

"We set our team goals to finish in the top five," described Reyes. "We showed up a little undermanned. We had 11 guys out of 14 classes and I told the guys we needed five medals to crack the top five. We came close to that, we had five guys in contention."

"We were off balance in the beginning of the tournament," recalled Reyes. "We lost a lot of close matches. We started getting discouraged so we got the team together. We got them remotivated. Got them refocused and said we have to be the king of consolations and start battling back for third. That's when the team stepped up and I think in one stretch we won like six out of seven matches and that set the tone and we got five guys alive all the way to the end, one round away from placing."

When asked about Ramirez, Reyes glowed, "Vince, what can I say? He sets the bar right now for our program. Even though he's only a puppy, a sophomore, he's hungry and explosive. He thinks about wrestling 24/7. Even after practices he goes out running, he's lifting, and all his hard work is paying off."

Reyes went on to say, "He won the tournament last week, looked good, knocked off a state qualifier last week and this week, a kid that was seeded first got beat in the semis, and he just pounded that kid. He really took it to that kid. I thought it would be a little closer but it seems like with Vince, the more important the match, he brings up the intensity."

The team

"Overall our lineup, we're still an average team," said Reyes. "Today proved that we got a couple of kids that are standouts. We got a lot of work ahead of us. This week, Kiwanis is a very tough tournament. It ranks up here, probably a little tougher than this one. We're going to have to put in the work, correct our silly mistakes, and keep on trucking in order to move up the ladder."

The future?

"It's still young in the season," said Reyes. "We can still make some corrections, I don't want to get too overly excited about Kenny or Vince 'cause these tournaments are just preparation for the post season and that's where true success of the season pans out.

"Danny (May) qualified for regions last year, so did Shaun Cadoret and Kenny did and so did Vince. Those four guys are pretty much leaders of the team. Danny, he's rusty. He's a big strong kid, and he plays football so he didn't do a lot of off-season wrestling because he's a football player. This is his first tournament, so we got to get the rust out of him, and he'll be able to become more of a force in the season."

"I just started last year in the middle of the season. I won the first one then didn't make it. I had two pins," said May afterward. "I like slammin' people. I came out and tried real hard, but I have a lot of work to do."

"Next week, we're going to have Wayne Snell back, he's a regional qualifier," explained Coach Reyes. "Losing a hard worker like that hurts us. It's like playing with one less bullet. We'll have Nathan Brazeau back; he's also another football player. He's strong, powerful. He's an ox. I'll try to mold him into a wrestler. We'll have a little more firepower coming into next week."

Coach Reyes summed it up saying, "I'm a teacher. If I graded my team today, I'd say, about a C+. They were resilient, they were able to bounce back and score some big points for us in wrestlebacks. This is my second year at Central, and you got to shoot for the top or, basically you're preparing for mediocrity."

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