Rams Pin Down Fifth in FCIAC Tournament

One score and four years ago, a team besides the Danbury Hatters won the FCIAC wrestling title. At Saturday's final round of the Joe Sikorski FCIAC Wrestling Championships Fairfield-Warde put an end to their reign, beating them out by eight points and giving the Mustangs their first title in school history.

"As of yesterday we thought Danbury was going to take it," said New Canaan Head Coach Paul Gallo.

The scene in the New Canaan High School gym was more WWE than high school wrestling, as the crowd kept the energy at its maximum for the entire event, screaming and yelling support for their wrestlers. The Danbury squad even contributed a bit to the theater of the event, with the entire team bleaching their hair. Unfortunately it couldn't bring them another title, as the tournament was decided in the 215-pound final when Marcio Ventura of Warde took out Danbury's Dylan Hancock.

New Canaan came in fifth with 115 points, only 3.5 behind Stamford. Greenwich placed third with 158.

"They had a lot of great individual performances," Gallo said of the Cardinals.

One of those performances came in the match of the night, the 140-pound final which pitted Greenwich's David Laborda against New Canaan's Brian Khzouz.

Khzouz jumped out early, scoring a quick takedown and a 2-0 lead. A Laborda escape brought him within a point, and in the third period the boys traded scores to knot the score at 3-3. The match went into overtime, with the crowd screaming and urging both wrestlers on. Khzouz took a 4-3 lead with a great escape, but was quickly matched by Laborda to knot the score up once again. In the final period Laborda was able to outlast Khzouz and take the 140-pound title.

"I got really tired in overtime," Khzouz said. "I think I wrestled a better match than him, but that's just the way it came down."

New Canaan also got second in the 112-pound weight class from Andy Lee. He faced off against Danbury's Brian Jennings, who was not only the tournament's No. 1 seed but one of the top wrestlers in the state in the 112-pound division. Jennings took it to Lee for the entire match, and scored the victory via pin.

"He wrestled hard, he tried a few different things to get the win, but he just got pinned," Gallo said. "He had a great tournament to get to the finals."

Staples High School had a tough first day at the tournament, sending only four of their wrestlers on to compete in the semi-finals. The top finisher for the Wreckers was Said Sarfaraz, who took second place in the 275-pound division. He had a great tournament to advance all the way to the finals, but ran into a brick wall named Jeff Starr from Brien McMahon. Starr was wrestling a weight that deseved to be in the division, but Safaraz was clearly much smaller. Starr got on him right away and got the quick pin to take the title for the division.

"Said is our only senior, and he had a really good tournament," said Staples Head Coach Kevin Lippert, whose team finished twelfth overall. "We'll definitely be much improved next year, bringing back a lot of strong wrestlers."

Some other notable finishes for area schools: Conor Flynn, New Canaan, sixth place at 119 pounds; Hunter Eldred, New Canaan, third place at 135 pounds; Chris Giunta, Staples, fourth place at 189 pounds; Lars Remole, thirs place at 140 pounds.