By Ed Piper
You have to work quickly if you want to be in position to cover Gustav Rinaldi, La Jolla's stellar 175-pound wrestler.
He operates on a fast pace. In his first match at the annual Monte Vista Invitational Sat., Jan. 13, he terminated his unfortunate opponent, Leo Virgen-Gonzalez of Grossmont--in the sense the guy was paired against Rinaldi in their bracket--in one minute, 32 seconds. That put him into the second round of the tournament, later in the morning.
It was barely time to find the mat (of seven operating in the tourney in two rooms), grab a corner of the mat with a view of the bout and the small electronic scoreboard on the scorer's table flashing key info, and begin snapping photos. Then, with only the minute and a half elapsed, a reporter making notes in his notepad, Gustav and crew were up and gone from the mat, only to be found behind the scorer's position with teammate Nerva Mugisha, who videotaped the 175-pounder's bout.
They were viewing Rinaldi's delightful result with other teammates. "Did you see this?" queried a Viking wrestler of the reporter. He had, indeed--the match went by in a flash before the senior's fall late in the first period.
In the La Jolla captain's next match, he overwhelmed Riley Skomowski of West Hills in an even shorter time--a pin in 1:01. That's not even fair.
In so doing, the Viking earned his team eight points for the two pins. In his next bout, the 178-pound quarterfinals, early in the afternoon, Gustav was pinned in 1:53 by Gavin Clark of Santana. Clark pinned one opponent in 12 seconds leading up to his quarterfinal match.
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