Ethan Mitchell, who coaches East Hampton High School’s wrestling team, sent a third of his roster, which is to say 23 competitors, out to the mats in Saturday’s Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament here. Eight of them reached the semifinal round, and four made it to the finals. Three — Bronco Campsey, a sophomore, at 116 pounds, Adam Beckwith, a senior, at 190, and Juan Espinoza, a junior, at 215 — wound up as champions.
East Hampton’s team finished third in the eight-team invitational tourney, behind Sachem North, the Sprig’s 2023 champion, and Mount Sinai, which was sixth last year.
“I’m definitely proud of how we did,” Mitchell said after the daylong event, whose action on three mats was nonstop from 9 a.m. “Sachem North is one of the top-ranked teams in the county, and Mount Sinai is one of the best in Division II. It was good to take third to them.”
The continuous action played out before a rapt crowd that filled the gym, and even though the customary break between the quarterfinals and semifinals was forgone, the tournament didn’t end, Mitchell said, until 6:20 p.m.
“Drive it! Drive it!” you could hear coaches call out when their charges tried for single or double-leg takedowns, or “Squeeze! Squeeze!” when their wrestlers caught opponents in cradle holds or headlocks. There were periodic eruptions as fan favorites’ hands were held up by referees.
Campsey, who was the 101-pound class’s runner-up in this tournament last year, ran through four opponents on Saturday, pinning two of them, on the way to the 116-pound title. In the final, he major-decisioned Mount Sinai’s Antonio Faldetta 9-0. “He’s stronger — he looks very good at his weight,” Mitchell said of him.
Asked what holds Beckwith had used to pin his four opponents, East Hampton’s coach said, “He got them on their backs and that was it.” The 190-pound senior, who was the Sprig’s 170-pound champion in 2023, pinned Sachem North’s Dimitrios Gonzalez with 1 minute and 20 seconds gone in the final.
East Hampton had both finalists in the 215-pound class, with Juan Espinoza, a junior, emerging as the champion, pinning his teammate Francesco Palombino, also a junior, in the second period. Palombino was the class’s champion last year, having defeated Espinoza in the semis.
Other East Hampton place-winners Saturday were Juan Roque, a senior, the 124-pound runner-up — as he was in the 2023 tournament, Justin Prince, a senior, who placed third in the 160-pound division, and Jose Elias, a senior, Anthony Petersohn, a senior, and Chris Amay, a sophomore, all fourth-place finishers in their classes — 124 pounds in Elias’s case, 131 pounds in Petersohn’s, and 170 in Amay’s.
Rounding out Mitchell’s roster were Hudson Beckmann, a 190-pounder, Justin Guachun-Sayay (215), and Esteban Velez (145), seniors; Frank Barrientos (152) and Matias Gonzalez (160), juniors; Manuel Calle (131), Aiden Gavilanes (160), Cyrus Halweil (131), and Valon Pipino (108), sophomores, and Matias Armijos (145), Caleb Mott (138), Orson O’Brien (190), Daivin Pelaez (116), and Kavi Vasquez (145), freshmen.
East Hampton was to have opened the dual meet season here with Northport yesterday. The Bonackers are to wrestle at North Babylon, the defending county champion, tomorrow.
