By Ed Piper
"We've had some good matches today. It's a good way to finish," exulted Kellen Delaney, La Jolla's head wrestling coach, Saturday afternoon, Jan. 26, at the Viking team picnic outside the Holville High gym in Imperial Valley.
Zeke Pearl, in a 122-pound match in the Hard Luck Bracket on the outside mats, forged his way to a narrow 7-6 win over Chance Matson of Ramona earlier Saturday. (There were five mats inside the gym.)
Pearl took a 2-1 lead in the first period on a takedown, then found himself knotted with Matson 6-6 after a flurry of points by both wrestlers in the second period.
The winning point came on an escape Zeke pulled off late in the lower-weight bout.
Teammate Alex Von Mueller, a novice to wrestling who showed his willingness to try a new sport and to travel with the team to the distant tournament, forcing him to arrange to take his Friday finals on an earlier day, engaged fellow 128-pounder Jeffrey Johnson of Cathedral in a Saturday morning bout.
The first period ended with no score. In period two, Johnson led 2-0 with 1:17 left when Von Mueller sustained what was diagnosed on a preliminary basis as a badly bruised knee when his knee hit the mat on a legal maneuver. After Delaney and a Holtville High athletic trainer attended to the freshman, the match was called.
At the later picnic, Alex seemed to be moving without grimacing and his mother said he appeared to be okay.
This latter match also took place in the Hard Luck Bracket, for competitors who had lost two matches in the championship and consolation brackets of the Holtville Rotary Invitational.
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