SAN JOSE — Just a freshman, Christian Cabuag thinks he’ll get back to another Central Coast Section championship match eventually.
Second-year head coach Armando Gonzalez said he knows he will.
Given his meteoric rise this season, it’s not out of the question.
Cabuag, seeded No. 2, wrestled tough, but couldn’t upset top-seeded Eric Sanchez of Silver Creek High, and finished runner-up in the 113-pound division after being pinned in the third round.
“Chris is a freshman,” Gonzalez said. “We were happy going into the match, knowing that he’d have no pressure and we just wanted him to enjoy himself.”
Upbeat and smiling after the match, Cabuag said he definitely enjoyed the experience, and hoped he’d made a name for himself while wrestling in front of the hundreds in attendance at Independence High.
“It’s pretty big for me, for my family and for anybody that’s helped me throughout the years,” said Cabuag, who started wrestling in sixth grade. “I just want to thank them.”
M.V.C. as a program might be on the radar of the CCS, too, after a fifth-place finish as a team with 125 points.
It is believed to be the highest finish in program history.
Gilroy High won the CCS meet for the 16th straight time with 373.5 points behind 11 finalists and 10 champs.
Only Evergreen Valley High (134.5), Alvarez High (130) and San Benito High (125.5) placed above the Mustangs, who brought only nine wrestlers, but had four advance to the semifinal round and five find a spot on the podium.
“We’ve exceeded every one of our goals and expectations that we set at the beginning of this year,” said Gonzalez, also mentioning the team’s 5-0 finish in its Monterey Bay League Pacific division dual meet season. “Next year, we’re going to set the bar even higher.”
Cabuag’s second-place finish also guaranteed him a spot at next week’s California Interscholastic Federation state meet at Rabobank Arena in Bakersfield.
Junior Amman Klair will join him at state after taking third in the 138-pound division by pinning James Ost of Los Altos High.
Klair lost in the semifinal round to Gilroy’s Daniel Vizcarra, the eventual champion, but rebounded with a pair of wins, including his pin of Ost in the third-place match.
His younger brother, Amit, finished one spot shy of joining them. The freshman took fourth at 106 pounds after losing to Palma High’s Zachary Thompson by a 7-1 decision in the deciding match.
Senior Mateo Montoya (120 pounds) finished fifth for the second consecutive season, and sophomore Eddie Zamora (126) took sixth.
In head coach Reggie Roberts’ swan song, Aptos High finished 17th as a team with 51 points.
Senior Keegan Dutton-Jones, a two-time Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League champ, made it to the third-place match in the 182-pound division after falling in the semifinals, but heartbreakingly lost to Niko Ozden of Menlo-Atherton via a 2-1 decision.
No other local team finished in the top 20.
Watsonville High senior Abel Pena could not defend his CCS championship at 120 pounds after missing weight before Friday’s action began.
The Wildcatz finished tied for 39th with 22 points.
Cabuag was just two weeks removed from stunning the field at the MBL championships to win the league title, and the momentum carried over to the preliminary rounds of CCS.
He breezed through his first four matches, winning two by pins in under a minute, another by a 17-2 technical fall and the fourth by a 16-8 major decision.
He hit a wall in the championship match.
Sanchez jumped out to a 7-0 lead with a two-point takedown in the first, a three-point near fall in the second and another two-point takedown early in the third. Cabuag scored a one-point escape, a two-point takedown and a two-point near fall in the final minute of the third, but Sanchez took quick advantage of the overaggressive freshman and locked him to the mat after scoring a two-point reversal.
“That throw would’ve tied the match or pinned him,” Gonzalez said. “It was all we could do.”
Gonzalez said the moment and the bright lights might have affected his prodigy, who had racked up five tournament wins over the course of the season, but had not wrestled on a big stage like CCS.
Cabuag said he might have been a bit overwhelmed when the flood lights were shining down, but he expected to be in that spot.
“I really wasn’t intimidated by the athletes that were in here,” Cabuag said. “I just wanted to have fun and be able to show what I can do. My coaches believe I can. Everyone else believes I can. So why not?”
