Northampton’s dual meet with Parkland last Wednesday featured a battle of two of the area’s top heavyweights as the Kids’ Gavin Grell faced off against the Trojan’s Michael Gavrilesku for the fifth time in just over a year.

Grell’s 3-1 win in the second bout of the night set the table for a 39-21 Northampton win to move the K-Kids’ record to 4-3 for the season.

Head coach Joe Provini described the evolution of his junior 285-pounder, “Gavin Grell is unbelievable. He got pinned by Gavrilesku in the dual meet last year, and then he was beating him at district duals, but lateral dropped at the end and lost. So he was closing the gap. He lost 2-1 in the postseason last year (in the district 5th place match), then beat him in ride-out at the Holiday (Classic) last month and now he takes him down and wins. That’s exactly what we want, every time out just a little bit better. When he starts to believe in his offense, he could be scary good.”

Grell echoed Provini’s sentiments, “When I first used to wrestle him, he used to beat me every time. I’m starting to get that feeling with wrestling that I can hang with the better guys. It’s a great feeling beating someone as good as him. I was telling myself, ‘I gotta score on this guy or I’m going to go into overtime.’ I want to win by a bigger margin every time I go out and wrestle.”

Northampton won 8 of the 13 bouts and racked up 5 falls en route to the win.

The K-Kids’ pinners were: 114 Gabe Ballard in 2:29, 133 Trey Wagner in 3:17, 145 Chase Grabfelder in 2:41, 152 Austin Noe in :38, and 189 Landon Roland in 5:09.

The other winners for Northampton: 127 Colin Marano by 9-4 decision and 160 Chace Roland by 4-2 decision.

On the girls’ side the Kids ran into their toughest opponent to date. Parkland’s girls program has been in place for several years and the additional experience showed as the Trojans, ranked 5th in the state, won 60-15.

The highlight was the match between Northampton’s Mylea Lambert and Parkland’s Shannon Fratus. Fratus was ranked third in the state at 170 by pa-wrestling.com, but Lambert scored a first period takedown on a blast double and then pinned her opponent 50 seconds into the second period after escaping from the bottom position.

Jaida Onyango scored the other bout win, a 6-5 decision over Payton Ocasio. Onyango escaped from the bottom in the third period to break a 5-5 tie with 1:18 left and managed to fend off Ocasio to claim the victory. Danielle Glaser received a forfeit win.

Both squads will be back in action Saturday night for duals with Bethlehem Catholic. The Golden Hawks’ boys lost to Easton last week but will still be bringing a formidable lineup to Pete Schneider Gymnasium. The Hawks’ girls team won the Tony Iasiello Memorial Tournament over the holidays, but are not state ranked, so they will provide a good measuring stick for Northampton’s progress.