Rare home meet celebrates Riverhawk senior wrestlers

“Overall, I was very pleased with our performance,” said Beasley. “It was a really special day for our seniors, because not many people have ever seen them wrestle, other than their family. I felt so proud of Aiden, and he’s overcome a lot physically. His family has been the heartbeat of our program and they have been to every meet and almost every practice. Kevin Marx (Aiden’s dad) has been almost like a fourth coach on our team.”

Seniors Bandel-Ramirez, Marx and Nathan Pyles were honored for their contributions to the Riverhawk wrestling program for the past four years and it was the final time of their career that they would compete in a meet at The Dalles High School. They were accompanied by their parents and presented with gifts.

Bandel-Ramirez split her two matches in the girls 130-pound division. The 2022 OSAA state qualifier won a match by a pin and lost one by a pin which put her season record at 6-1.

“Overall, I felt like I had a pretty good match, and it was super fun with our senior night celebration,” said Bandel-Ramirez. “My goal is to get to state again and have a little more success than I did last year.”

She was seventh at state a season ago.

“I’m super excited and I put in a lot of work in the offseason with Coach Abrams and he’s helped me improve a lot,” she said. “I’m hoping to get to state again and have a top-six podium finish.”

Marx had a sensational match at 195 pounds as he pinned Corbett High Cardinal sophomore Zane Davis in 62 seconds. It marked the fourth win this year for Marx.

“It’s always nice to get a match done and over with quickly so that you don’t have to struggle the whole time, because you just get worn out in each round,” said Marx. “In my experience, I like to go all out in the first match. Knowing that I did my best in the first round is a little bit of a relief, because it just drives me more in each round to push forward. I’m really hoping to qualify for the state meet this year, which would be really nice. I’ve never been to it, and it’s been my goal every year. I’m focusing more and more on going to state this year. It’s nice having a home match, which is kind of rare for us because we hardly ever have one and it’s nice seeing a big crowd here, too.”

Pyles hasn’t been able to compete very often this year, because of a right shoulder injury that he sustained last season.

“I hurt my shoulder last year and it still bothered me a lot this year, but I was wrestling during the first part of the season and then it just got worse when I went to our first meet,” he said. “I’ve been told by some people that it’s probably a season ending injury, so that’s kind of unfortunate. However, I don’t want my season to be over though and I”m hoping that I can start competing again by the end of the season.”

Sophomore Julian Moorehouse split his two matches in the 170-pound bracket. Moorehouse’s win came against Goldendale’s Raymond Holycross in a 37-seconds win.

Silas Parsons, a 2022 Riverhawks boys state qualifier, split his two matches in the 220-pound weight class. Merik Peacock also won by a pin following a grueling six-minute match in the 220- pound class for The Dalles. Freshman Alexander De’latorre split his two matches at 152 pounds.

“We know that we’re going to get overwhelmed physically with a lot of our young freshmen,” said Beasley. “You can’t buy physical maturity. No matter how aggressive and physically skilled you are, if someone is physically more mature, it’s more than likely that they will beat you. So that was the lesson that some of our kids learned today.”