Winning two out of four isn’t always 50 percent. Confused? Just ask Towson’s Jesse Garrett.
Over the course of the 2010-2011 wrestling season, Garrett and Perry Hall’s Robin Paguia have met head-to-head on four different occasions, and each wrestler has walked off the mat with two wins.
It was Garrett’s wins, however, that were in post-season, and led to his back-to-back Baltimore County and 3A/4A North Regional Championships, adding championship hardware to his growing trophy case..
“Fatigue had won, and I felt heavy,” Garrett said after his 140-pound regional final with Paguia. “I was down by two and knew I couldn’t get under his legs.
Down two points and looking to the clock, which had just 12 ticks before time expired, Garrett resorted to his Judo background and hit a hip-toss near the edge of the mat, taking Paguia to his back for a four-point move and just seconds left.
“I was freaking out,” Garrett laughed, as he recalled the last time he led by two points with just second left. “He caught be in the Franklin Tournament by hitting a gramby and spladling me for the pin. I knew I had to stay heavy and stay back so he couldn’t hit the gramby again.”
Garrett won the regional title with a 5-3 decision, adding a point to his win from the Baltimore County semifinals, where he defeated Paguia by just one point before winning a county title.
Paguia’s first win over Garrett came by a five-point decision, and the fall in the Franklin Tournament gives the Gator the bigger win differential, but all that is now set aside with this weekend’s MPSSAA State Tournament at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Inside Cole Field House, Paguia will have to upset the 140-pound’s No. 4 and No. 1 seeds if her were to see Garrett for a fifth time in 2010-2011, this time in the 3A/4A 140-pound state finals.
And Garrett’s path to a fifth meeting doesn’t come much easier, needing to dispatch the fellow regional champion Salaman Riddell of Old Mill, who also holds a state title from 2010.
“I knew it was going to be a battle with Paguia, and that’s what I expect all my patches in the states will be like,” Garrett said. “I have studied my mistakes in past matches and built upon it, and I wan to take it the whole way. Just like I took counties and regionals, I want to go all the way.”
