If the Chapel Hill wrestling team didn’t understand the magnitude of what they accomplished at the end of Thursday night, you really can’t blame them.
Very few of them were alive the last time Orange lost a conference match.
That was 17 years ago, which was also the last time the Panthers didn’t win a conference championship.
Now, after years of frustration, the Tigers can say they finally slayed the dragon. And they did it on Orange’s senior night.
The Tigers defeated Orange 32-30 to win the Big 8 Conference championship on Thursday night at Panther Gymnasium. The Tigers didn’t lead until the final match. Orange was one victory away from winning its 17th consecutive conference championship. Instead, they will go on the road to begin the 3A State Dual Team Tournament on Tuesday, most likely against Union Pines.
With Orange (23-4, 6-1 in the Big 8) leading 30-26 going into the final match, Chapel Hill’s Porter Brice pinned Orange’s Campbell Bourlon in 4:44. After the referee’s arm slammed against the mat, Chapel Hill Coach Tripp Price was embraced by his players and assistants for the Tigers first conference championship in wrestling since joining the 3A ranks in 2010.
It was Chapel Hill’s first win over Orange in wrestling in decades. The Panthers had defeated the Tigers in all ten of their regular season matches since the two became conference rivals again in 2010, in addition to the opening round of the 2016 state dual matches.
Orange, which led 30-16 with three matches remaining, suffered its first conference loss since 2003 against Riverside, when they were a 4A team competing in the PAC-6 Conference. From 2004-19, Orange won every conference championship competing in two different classifications.
Orange went undefeated against conference opponents for the entire decade of the 2010s, going 62-0. On December 11, the Panthers defeated crosstown rival Cedar Ridge to finish a perfect decade against league opposition.
“Chapel Hill is a very good team,” said Orange wrestling coach Spenser Poteat. “We gave up bonus points in a lot of matches. They didn’t give up a lot of bonus points. You can tell that from the final score. They won by two. We had three or four matches where we could have scored more points and we didn’t.”
Coming off a 81-0 victory at Northern Durham the night before, Orange won the first three matches. At 126 pounds, Kessel Summers pinned Diego Reveles in 1:56. Matthew Smith-Breeden scored a 9-1 major decision over Bro Dinh. Orange’s Henry Joubert-Stanzel increased the Panther lead to 13-0 with a 13-7 decision over Ta’Vonne Page.
Of Chapel Hill’s seven individual victories, five came with bonus points. It started at 145 pounds when Alexander Gunning earned a major decision over Tayton Alvis 15-5.
After Noah Davis got a major decision of his own against Bryan Lopez 18-4, the Tigers won consecutive matches. Can Kilic earned an 8-4 win over Korbin Nevius. At 170, Devine Pipkins pinned Nathan Hecht in 4:52 to cut Orange’s lead to 17-13.
Brendon Worsham, who finished second at the Silver Fox Invitational at Riverside on Saturday, defeated Bryan Ramirez 14-10 at 182 pounds. At 195, Orange’s Xavier Tinnen pinned Milad Aghaiepour in 2:58 to push the Panther lead to 26-13.
With hopes for an upset slipping away, Chapel Hill’s Ian Hamilton defeated Tyler Larkin 5-1 at 220. In a thriller at heavyweight, Orange senior Juan Navarro won a sudden death match against Ben Yates 3-2 to increase Orange’s advantage to 30-16.
Chapel Hill’s Lucas Daley pinned Dillon Heffernan in 4:34 at 106 pounds. Moo Soe outscored Josh Bunn 19-11, leading to Brice’s heroics in the final match.
“Congratulations to Chapel Hill,” Poteat said. “Hopefully, this will show our guys that you have to work hard at all times and not give up points when you don’t have to. Obviously, we wanted to win, but we didn’t. Now it’s time to start it back again.”