Motivated Newcomer gets revenge, wins title

LAGUNA HILLS - Laguna Hills 135-pound wrestler Mitch Newcomer said his loss to Santa Monica's Sami Syed in the finals of the of the Nogales Super Championship Tournament on Jan. 10 — Newcomer's only defeat of the season — served as motivation.

After that defeat, Newcomer came back to knock off three of the top eight wrestlers in the state enroute to a first-place finish at last week's prestigious Five Counties Invitational.

For an encore, Newcomer won his weight class Saturday at the Laguna Hills Invitational at Laguna Hills High, and he did it by defeating Syed, 5-0, in the championship match.

"Two weeks ago, I needed to be beat," said Newcomer, a senior. "It put the drive in me � that I'm not good enough and have to keep training."

Many of Newcomer's teammates were equally impressive as Laguna Hills came away with the team title.

The Hawks scored 283.5 points. Servite was second with 142 and Capistrano Valley third, scoring 118.5.

Laguna Hills sent 10 wrestlers to the finals with nine winning championships.

The Hawks' Ian Helstien (130) pinned all four opponents and edged Newcomer to win Lower Weight MVP honors.

Other Hawks finishing first were: Fernando Garcia (103), Juan Jaime (112), Bobby Morales (119), Ian Frank (125), Eric Roberts (140) and Dominic Vallejo (171)

Tesoro's Sean Datte (160) was awarded the Upper Weight MVP medal after pinning his first three opponents in a minute or less and winning a 12-6 decision in the final over Laguna Hills' Bryce Zarraga.

Servite's Wyatt Baker captured the 275-pound title by pinning Trabuco Hills' Chris Belback.

However, the more entertaining match was Baker's 9-7 semifinal victory in overtime over Orange Lutheran's Matt Culp.

The Trinity League rivals have wrestled three times this season with Baker winning twice. All three matches went into overtime.

Capistrano Valley had two champions: Shaun Felix-Tuu (189) defeated Servite's Josh Gaston, 9-6, in the final, and Michael Maierhofer defeated Tesoro's Matt Longo, 7-5, to win the 215-pound title.

Contact the writer: lponsi@ocregister.com