The beauty of any competitive dual wrestling match is that any of the 14 individual bouts making up the dual could be the difference between winning and losing.

The underdog could only need to win one or two matches to flip the dual in their favor and they could come from anywhere in the lineup. Wednesday night’s Sierra Foothill League dual between Del Oro and Folsom came down to the final bout at 138 pounds. Del Oro’s Eli Honsa and Folsom’s Timmy Brand lined up across from one another and whoever won the bout would give their respective school the victory. Honsa pinned Brand in the second period, giving Del Oro a 34-30 victory. The win also is a leg up in the race for the Sierra Foothill League title, as either Del Oro or Folsom has won the league since the Bulldogs joined in 2015. While Folsom is the defending champs, Del Oro now has the inside track to reclaim the title they had won in 2020.

“We were missing a couple guys so we had to take some risks,” Del Oro coach Clint Madden said. “We had to move our whole lineup up and it could have gone really well or horribly wrong. We had a crazy plan and the kids believed in it and wrestled awesome.”

Though it’s easy to look at the final bout and say it was the difference in the match, and on paper it was, but so many other matches played a role. Both Madden and Folsom coach Mike Collier said the first two bouts were two of the biggest and Del Oro won both. Collier was counting on those matches to be wins for his team.

“We knew they might move some kids up at 45 and 52, but we were still confident that they were winnable matches,” Collier said. “I think it was one of those cases where the kids were a little too fired up and had too much adrenaline and came out flat.”

The match opened with Del Oro’s Logan Banks facing Ryland Smith followed by Maurizio Igarashi going up against Preston McAninch. Banks earned a convincing 11-4 decision, while Igarashi made it two-for-two for the Golden Eagles with a strong 5-1 win, giving Del Oro an early 6-0 lead, but more importantly, winning matches that the Bulldogs were counting on.

“The last match was big, we wanted to get Eli on the mat; but those first two matches were key for us,” Madden said. “We moved those guys up and they picked up big wins.”

The Golden Eagles made it three-for-three after Wyatt Alexander earned a 12-5 decision over Luke Supple, as Del Oro came out ready to wrestle.

Bonus points helped the Bulldogs climb back in the match, as they doubled up Del Oro’s score with three straight pins at 170 (Xander Webster), 182 (Angelo Sardo) and 195 (Colin Denny), as Folsom took an 18-9 lead.

Del Oro’s Kainoa Acia earned six of those points back with a pin at 220, while Folsom heavyweight Enzo Mezoui, also wrestling up a weight class, traded pins with Acia to give the Bulldogs a 24-18 lead heading back down to the lower weight classes.

Del Oro moved one of their top guns Sirah Sidhu from 106 to 113 to compete against Elias Rivera, and Sidhu took care of business with a technical fall victory, 18-1.

Folsom’s last two wins at 106 (Kai Yi-Berg) and 120 (Anthony Cruz) were also big matches. Both Yi-Berg and Cruz had their opponents on their backs for extended stretches but neither earned the pin. Had one of them gotten a pin, the Bulldogs would have won the match. Yi-Berg won 8-3 and Cruz earned a 10-3 win.

Instead, Folsom led 30-20 with three matches remaining. With two of Del Oro’s top wrestlers up next, the Bulldogs were in trouble. Isaac Herrera (126) and Jagger French (132) both picked up major decisions, 9-1, and 16-5, respectively, pulling the Golden Eagles to within two points, 30-28, setting up Honsa to be the hero.

“As the match went on, we settled down,” Collier said. “I thought we definitely had a pin at 106 and we could have had one at 120. Those were big. Had we won one of the first two matches, we would have won the dual.”

Del Oro won eight of the 14 matches, while Folsom scored two more bonus points than the Golden Eagles (12-10) with four pins to Del Oro’s two, plus technical fall and two major decisions.