It was feast or famine for the Harvard wrestlers at Brown on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, six Harvard wrestlers starved as the Crimson fell to the Bears 21-14.
Harvard won four out of ten matches. O’Donnell, El-Hayek (133 lbs.), Jantzen and Griffin were all winners.
Only three out of the ten matches were within four points as Harvard both won big and lost big.
In the meet’s first and most exciting match, O’Donnell narrowly defeated junior Chris Ayers, 8-5, in a match in which he trailed early and late. Ayers was able to grab O’Donnell’s ankle effectively and score on two different occasions. Down 2-0 in the first and 5-3 in the third period, O’Donnell took Ayers down to tie the score and later held him in a cradle for five seconds, a three-point move that earned him the 8-5 victory.
“I never felt like I was in trouble, but I was never comfortable during the match either,” O’Donnell said.
In a 174-pound sophomore battle, Brown’s Adam Santee got the best of P.J. Jones, 6-2. Lee lost a hard-fought match to senior Karl Rittger, 2-0, at 184 lbs. Scoreless through most of the first and second periods, Rittger only managed a pair of escapes to seal the narrow win.
Harvard’s wrestlers had trouble scoring against Brown. In their six losses, no Harvard wrestler managed more than three points and two were shut-out.
The 15th-ranked Rechul, Harvard’s heavyweight, left hungry for more after a disappointing 10-2 loss to senior No. 13 Bronson Lingamfelter. The smaller Rechul was recovering from a sprained knee and had his leg taped from mid-thigh to mid-shin. Lingamfelter capitalized on Rechul’s injury by grabbing his leg and bringing him down.
“He noticed that I was hurt there and kept pouncing on it,” Rechul said. “I was recovering from a sprained knee, and that affected me more mentally than anything else. I was too reserved in my own offense and obviously suffered the consequences.”
Jantzen had no trouble with Brown senior Jason Mercado, nearly pinning him 30 seconds into the match and settling for a 12-0 whitewash. Griffin was similarly in control against Brown junior Jesse Savage in his 11-3 victory. El-Hayek, for his part, totally dominated Bears senior Rob Apgar, who despite hoisting Harvard’s captain way up in the air managed only one point in a 6-1 loss.
“Apgar was very good at defending my set-ups, but because he wasn’t doing much on his feet I never felt threatened during the match,” El-Hayek said. “I focused on maintaining motion and solid defense.”
All in all, the meet was disappointing.
“We did not wrestle with pride, and if anything needs to change before EIWAs, it’s that,” O’Donnell said. “It’s too late in the season to make any drastic changes in technique, or make great gains in conditioning. At this point in the season, we have to trust in our training and preparation and focus on having a champion’s attitude.”