One benefit of wrestling dual meets is that even if the teams are not evenly matched, there are often interesting individual matchups that can make the evening compelling.

Last Saturday’s contest between Northampton and Bethlehem Catholic ended with a not unexpected team score of 44-18 in favor of the Golden Hawks, but the Konkrete Kids’ faithful in attendance still had their moments to stand up and cheer for their side.

Head coach Joe Provini noted the disparity in this year’s squads, “We were overmatched at a lot of the weight classes. We knew that going in. I’m just looking for us to be a little bit better every time. They have a great group of talent over there. They have a lot of seasoned guys. But overall, I think there is a lot we can take from this moving ahead.”

The showcase match pitted two of the state’s best 114-pounders in the Kids’ Gabe Ballard and Becahi’s Reef Dillard. The two freshmen have wrestled each other “at least 100 times” according to Ballard, which led to a tense, low-scoring affair.

Ballard used a first period takedown, survived a cradle in the second period and eventually got a reversal to claim the 4-1 victory and run his record for the season to 27-1.

He described the rivalry with Dillard, “It’s always back and forth, but I’ve pulled these last few ones away. He’s always tough. He’s always great to wrestle.” He continued, “It was on my mind (knowing the match was upcoming) but try to go in with a blank slate and wrestle as hard as I can.”

At 133 pounds in the second bout of the night, Trey Wagner provided some fireworks as he ground down Mason Thomas for almost the whole 6 minutes, building a 9-1 lead before pinning the Golden Hawk with just 9 ticks left on the clock.

Gavin Grell made short work of Grant Mulhern, pinning his heavyweight opponent in just 39 seconds. The two big men had tumbled off the wrestling surface into the youth wrestlers sitting mat side virtually off the opening whistle. Fortunately, no squashing was reported.

Perhaps the match of the night from the Northampton perspective happened at 172. Chace Roland was taken down and tilted in the first period, but he fought back, scoring a tying takedown with just 5 seconds left in regulation and then securing the 7-5 win in sudden victory.

Roland described the comeback, “I just kept my mind focused on scoring points and figuring out how to get out of each situation. In the second period, I saw him trudging back to the center and I thought, ‘Aw this is my time now.’ That’s when I saw he was tired. This was by far my best match of the year.”

On the girls’ side, Mylea Lambert continued her dominance by pinning Jade Sinchi in 2:57 after building up a 13-2 lead. Danielle Glaser and Jaida Onyango received forfeits.

The team score was 60-18 in favor of Bethlehem Catholic.

On Saturday, the K-Kids will travel to Easton to renew their rivalry with the Red Rovers. Easton owns wins against Nazareth and Bethlehem Catholic this year, so a dual meet victory is unlikely, but there are sure to be a few memorable moments to get the blood racing.