Story and photos by Alex Doan
Last week the annual Five Counties Wrestling Tournament took place at FVHS. Five Counties is known as one of the biggest and toughest high school wrestling tournaments in the country and the wrestling community. This year 94 schools and teams from across the country came to compete in the tournament.
FV managed an overall placing of seventh out of 94 teams. Four FV wrestlers placed in the tournament for their weight classes. Andrew Morgan (’15) placed third, Bryant Vasquez (’14) placed fourth, Stone Escobedo (’15) placed seventh, and Ben Madrid (’15) placed eight.
“We’re a tough team, we wrestled hard, and we have some work to do but we’re [in the top 10] for the county and we’ll see where we land in the State meet and so forth,” said Coach Brad Woodbury.
Fountain Valley went up against fierce competition such as Buchanan High School, whose wrestlers took first place overall, won several awards, and took home four championship belts. However, the Barons still performed well in the tournament.
“[This tournament] is really preparing us for CIF, Masters, and State, which is what we are really aiming for,” said Vasquez. “It’s just a stepping stone for what we need to do.”
When talking to team captain Morgan, he said, “I think we [have] a run at a CIF title. We did finish behind some teams in our CIF [at this tournament] but definitely have a run.”
FV wrestling will be facing off against Edison on Jan. 23 second their away game of the season. The team is currently ranked overall fourth in Orange County as of Jan. 20.
