OFSAA 2007 Article
Drury denied OFSAA title repeat by one point by Steve LeBlanc. The Canadian Champion (Milton): Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Moffat, Iwasa-Madge fuel E.C. with gold-medal efforts
The provincial high school wrestling championships turned into a waiting game for the E.C. Drury Spartans.
It proved to be worth the wait for Alan Moffat and Kevin Iwasa-Madge, who briefly had the announcement of gold-medal victories held up by protests. For the team, some confusion in team scoring results delayed the results and when all was said and done, the Spartans were narrowly denied a second straight Ontario Federation of School Athletic Association (OFSAA) boys championship — and their seventh in eight years — by a single point at the Brampton Powerade Centre Friday. Still, Drury earned a 10th consecutive team medal by taking the silver.
Moffat won his second straight OFSAA gold despite moving up a weight class into the highly competitive 61 kg division. He defeated the class’ reigning champ, Guelph Centennial’s Cody Airdrie, in a close match.
Airdrie and Moffat, both members of the Ontario Under-18 team that competed at the Commonwealth Youth Wrestling Championships in Scotland last July, had squared off three times this season with Airdrie holding a 2-1 edge. Airdrie had lost just once all season — to Moffat in the final of the Ontario junior championship — and many considered him the best wrestler in any class.
“Moffat (winning) didn’t surprise me, but it did most people in the building,” said Drury coach Larry Jaroslawski. “A lot of people said (Moffat’s win) was a fluke at junior, especially after Cody beat him in the Lourdes tournament a couple of weeks ago.”
Moffat didn’t wrestle Airdrie the way he intended to at OFSAA in their most recent match, not wanting to tip his hand. It worked, as he continued to deliver in the big matches.
Moffat said patience is the key when wrestling Airdrie.
“All you can do is try to shut him out until the end and then score at the right moment,” he said.
That’s exactly what he did. When round one ended without a point, Airdrie won the coin toss, giving him the advantage for overtime, but Moffat held him off to take the opener. (Airdrie’s corner contended their wrestler scored a point but later withdrew the protest after a clarification).
In the second round, Airdrie struck first, forcing Moffat out of bounds. But with time winding down, the grade 12 Drury student forced Airdrie out to tie the match and took the round for having scored the last point. It clinched his third straight OFSAA medal — having claimed bronze in 2005 before his back-to-back golds.
It was the fifth straight victory of the tournament for Moffat, although it was far from easy. In the second round, he needed a last-second point to win the opening round against Riverside’s Justin Kinisch before taking the second round 3-0. In the semifinals he defeated another Commonwealth teammate, Ryan Lue of Central Elgin, 1-0 in overtime and then 1-0 on another last-second point.
Iwasa-Madge took a different route to OFSAA gold than Moffat. While Moffat faced his biggest challenges this year, Iwasa-Madge’s obstacles were in the past. At last year’s OFSAA tournament, he was a medal contender but lost in the quarterfinals to the eventual champion in a match Jaroslawski described as a war.
“Mentally, he didn’t recover from that,” Jaroslawski said. “He knew he was so close (to the gold medalist) but having to go around the long way, he got eliminated and didn’t make finals.”
This time around, Iwasa-Madge left no doubt. He had only lost once this year heading into OFSAA and continued to dominate in his first three matches to reach the semis, where he defeated Newtonbrook’s Cruiz Manning 8-1, 4-1.
The finals against St. Catharines’ Nathan Lunn would prove to be his first real test. After a scoreless first round, they went to overtime. Although Lunn got the advantage on the coin toss it was Iwasa-Madge who scored first on a reversal, though a quick scoring counter by Lunn left some doubt as to who scored first. “I was probably a little too cautious in the first round,” Iwasa-Madge said. “I knew he was a counter wrestler and he’d try to shut me down.”
He wouldn’t make that mistake in the second round, winning 4-0 to capture his long-awaited medal.
“I’ve been waiting two years,” he said. “This time I knew I could do it.”
Still, there would be some tense moments for Iwasa- Madge, as a video review by officials was needed to confirm the first-round victory. When he finally got word that the gold was his, it took some time to sink in.
“When they told me I had won, I was kind of shocked. I didn’t know whether to believe it or not.”
Perhaps hard to believe was the margin by which Drury missed another OFSAA team title. Smiths Falls edged Drury 129-128. “We can’t be too disappointed because we wrestled beyond our expectations,” Jaroslawski said.
Drury’s performance was bolstered by six finalists. Duncan Moffat (54 kg), Bobby Fillman (47.5 kg) and Nick Ronan (64 kg) finished fifth, while Mac Fillman (61 kg) was sixth.
A bronze-medalist last year, Bobby Fillman was seeded second, but was hurt by a first-round bye. That gave him a tough opponent in North Park’s Shane Mudford, who would finish fourth, for his first match. The Grade 10 student lost a three-round match in overtime and battled his way back into medal contention with four straight victories. But he again met Mudford, who won to advance to the bronze medal match.
Jaroslawski said Mac Fillman, wrestling up one division, and Nick Ronan both came through with some late come-from-behind victories and both turned in their best tournaments of the year. Duncan Moffat, a grade 10 student, reached the final in a class that was dominated by senior wrestlers.
Jared Robb went 3-2 in the 77 kg division while Chris Flanigan was 2-2 in the 64 kg. Michael McLelland (47.5 kg) won one match before being eliminated by teammate Bobby Fillman.