Millikan capped its eighth consecutive Moore League wrestling title by winning half of the individual final matches at Wilson on Thursday night. The most impressive thing about the results is that everyone in attendance couldn’t remember the last time the event had been so hotly contested.
2019 Moore League Wrestling Finals
Visit The562.org for more Long Beach sports coverage.
“I was proud of all of the kids that wrestled,” Millikan coach Marshall Thompson said. “The league was pretty balanced tonight, but I was happy with our guys and it’s time to get ready for CIF. That’s what it’s all about.”
Millikan had a wrestler in 11 of the 14 finals while Lakewood (6), Poly (6), Wilson (4) and Jordan (1) also had finals representatives. All four Bruins won their bouts.
“It was a fun finals and a good mix,” Wilson coach Seth Wegter. “Everyone we well represented and we had some good wrestling. It was a lot of fun.”
The most exciting match of the night came at 145 pounds where Millikan’s Jacob Zavala took on Wilson’s defending league champion Marcos Nottingham. The wrestlers were even 2-2 after the second round, and after Nottingham took a one-point lead, Zavala grabbed a 4-3 advantage on a take down with less than 20 seconds left in regulation.
“I lost my balance and that’s when my mentality had to change,” Nottingham said. “At that moment I realized I had about seven seconds left. So I got one leg out, and ran my feet the opposite way for the switch.”
Nottingham executed the move perfectly, and his reversal and countdown gave him the 7-4 victory.
“I’ve seen Nottingham wrestle a lot and often times at the very end he’ll just pull out that sheer desire to win, and that’s what he did tonight,” Wegter said. “It’s what we train him to do, and it’s what he likes to do.”
The CIF Southern Section wrestling individual finals are next weekend.
