Tigers will send five wrestlers to California State Wrestling Tourney March 2-3

Lemoore’s only entry in the CIF Girls State Wrestling Tournament, Eunique Barnes, dropped her two matches in the two-day tournament in Visalia this past weekend Feb. 23-24.

The preliminaries begin Friday, March 2 and conclude with the finals at 7 p.m. Saturday night (March 3).

Buchanan High School took top team honors with 290.5 points to outdistance runner-up Selma High School. Lemoore finished 12th overall in the final standings.

Joining Tiger Head Coach Marcio Botelho and his coaches for what seems like an annual trip to the state finals, are Lemoore athletes Wayne Joint and Jesse Gaytan, both of whom finished 10th in their respective weight classes. Joe Romero (140) and Will Kloster (162) each took seventh, while the Tigers’ top wrestler in Bakersfield, Jacob Gonsalves (222), finished fourth overall.

Gonsalves fought his way back to fourth after dropping an opening round 3-1 match to Bakersfield’s Justin Darter. Darter went to the tourney’s finals where he lost a 6-0 bout to champion Trevor Ervin, from Buchanan High School.

Gonsalves opened his consolation run with a victory over Liberty Madera’s Angel Lugo before dispatching Robert F. Kennedy’s Eric Campos. The talented senior wrestler downed Centennial’s Antonio Valle and then earned a spot in the third-place match by defeating Clovis West’s Mateo Morales.

However, Gonsalves couldn’t get past Garces High’s Isaiah Martin and had to settle for fourth place in the tourney.

Joe Romero also lost his first-round match to Bullard’s Dawson Sihavong before battling back in the consolation brackets to finished seventh. Kloster beat Madera South’s Augustine Garcia in the opening round but dropped his second-round match to Selma’s Oscar Diaz before finally finishing seventh overall and earned a spot in the state championships.