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Theriaque is runner up
Lucas Theriaque, admittedly, wasn’t expected to be in the championship match in the 165-pound weight class at the Class M wrestling state championship at Guilford High School.
The Woodstock Academy senior came in as the 14th seed and there he was on Saturday, getting ready to duel with the top seed, Matt Gish of Portland, for the championship.
“I was very surprised,” Theriaque said. “Going in as the 14th seed, I was just trying to make it past the first round and once I upset the three seed, I started to realize I could keep going on.”
Unfortunately, he would be denied the top prize by Gish who posted the 3-2 victory.
The Portland wrestler went up in the first round with a take down, but Theriaque escaped to cut the lead in half, 2-1.
Gish then chose bottom to start the second round and quickly fought his way back to neutral to go up 3-1.
“It was just a good back-and-forth, a lot of hand fighting. (Gish) has been doing it throughout his high school career and Lucas was able to do it this year thanks to Woodstock Academy bringing back the program and it gave him the opportunity to show his skills,” said coach Cahan Quinn.
Theriaque made it close at the end when he had a second escape, but there were only about 20 seconds left in the match.
“When I got that escape in the third period, I was pretty gassed out but I tried my best to take him down. I just didn’t have anything left in the gas tank,” Theriaque said.
He pinned 19th-seed Basel Chwicki of Jonathan Law in 3 minutes, 27 seconds in his first match.
“After watching that first match, I don’t know if I was too surprised to see him make the championship,” Quinn said. “He wrestled calm, he wrestled really smart and did not do anything that he didn’t set up. He was calm, cool and collected and I kind of had a feeling he was going to go pretty far.”
He then won over third-seeded Ralph Carter of Daniel Hand.
The senior finished off the Friday night battles with a hard fought, 6-4, victory over Domenic Maturo of Branford, meaning he had to come back for the semifinals.
Theriaque pinned Nolan Plourde of RHAM in 3:03 to advance to the final.
He is now qualified him for the State Open championship Friday.
There were few expectations at the beginning of the season — the first for the program in five years since it was discontinued — that anyone would make it to the Open never mind a Class M championship bout.
Indoor Track
The goal for junior Juliet Allard is to get under 41 seconds in the 300-meter.
She is tantalizingly close and will get another opportunity to do so in a couple of weeks.
Allard finished just 4/100ths of a second over that mark at the CIAC State Open Championship.
She placed third and bettered her school record in the event with a 41.04 finish, behind only Lauren Kropo of Naugatuck (40.40) and Kareema McKenzie of Windsor (40.62).
“She is so close to getting under 41 seconds which is what it takes for boys to qualify for States so she is starting to get to that level of competitiveness. It’s good to see,” coach Josh Welch said. “She will be exciting to watch at New England’s. I think she has, at least, another half a second in her, maybe more, this season.”
She will join teammates Emma Weitknecht, Talia Tremblay, and Julia Coyle as the four of them qualified in the 4x400m relay with a fifth-place finish at the State Open.
The Centaurs finished in 4 minutes, 10.1 seconds. E.O. Smith captured first in the event with a time of 4:02.86.
“It was good,” Welch said. “We were hoping to get down by the school record and they are just 0.99 of a second off of that. We’re getting close, a couple of adjustments with hand offs should be enough. Once we get those, I think they will get that record, too.”
The Centaurs came in seeded 10th.
“We were happy with that, we knocked a few seconds off,” Welch said of the fifth-place finish. “Talia Tremblay had a lot to do with it this time. She had a much more aggressive start and Juliet Allard just killed the close again. Her teammates put her into a much better position this time.”
Avery Plouffe finished 10th in the shotput with a 34-foot, 2-inch effort.
“A first-season kid coming in 10th in the Open is incredible,” Welch said.
The only boy who competed in the Open for Woodstock was Christian Menounos. He bettered his school record in the 1000-meter with a time of 2:35.2 but was not “super-stoked,” according to Welch, about his seventh-place finish.
“Christian had a good shot of making New England’s, but he is still struggling to put together his third lap. He backs off and then comes out swinging for the last couple and his last 400 was under 60 seconds. He just has to work on that little piece of his race where he has to stay on top of the pack at that point. He had a little lag there. It was still his fastest time this season and a very good race for him. He’s just one of those guys with super-high expectations,” Welch said.
New Englands is the first weekend in March followed the next weekend by the Nationals in New York City where Woodstock Academy will have entrants in the Friday, Saturday and Sunday sessions.
Boys’ Hockey
The Centaurs did not underestimate their opponent last week.
Daniel Hand came in as a team that has won just one game all season and Woodstock made sure it stayed that way as it posted a 9-1 win.
“We needed this, a game to get our confidence back up front. We needed a bunch of guys to pitch in and a lot of them who don’t normally play, got out there,” junior winger Maxx Corradi said.
Corradi got things started with the first of his three goals when he was fed by a pair of defensemen, Sam Desmond and Jared Nielsen, and put it into the back of the net 8 minutes, 19 seconds into the opening period.
Corradi made it a 2-0 game just four minutes later when he converted on a power-play goal. “Donny (Sousa) just made an unbelievable cross to me. I don’t know how he saw me and I was just able to nail it into the back of the net,” Corradi said.
The two-goal lead was what Woodstock took into the first-period locker room but it didn’t have to wait long for that to change.
Brady Lecuyer took a pass from Noah Sampson just 58 seconds into the second period for the goal and the Centaurs got another just moments later as Corradi polished off the hat trick.
It was another special teams tally as Corradi pushed home a shorthanded goal.
Sampson had a pair of third-period goals and finished with two assists as did Corradi and Ryan Wallace. Troy Daviau, Sousa and Thomas Blevins also tallied. It was the first career goal for Blevins, a senior.
The win raised the Centaurs record to 8-9 and lifted them back into the third ranking in CIAC Div. II.
Woodstock had briefly fallen behind West Haven into the fourth slot.
“We needed this 100 percent to get ready for States,” Corradi said. “It’s something we have been talking about all year is consistency and other guys producing. A game like this where everybody was able to pitch in is something we really needed.”
Boys’ Basketball
The hope was for double-digit wins for the season for the boys’ basketball team but it fell one short.
Windham ruined those dreams as it posted a 60-49 win.
The loss means Woodstock finishes up the season with a 9-11 record.
It is also the eighth seed for the ECC and will host No. 9 Ledyard on Wednesday in an ECC tournament play-in game at the Alumni Fieldhouse.
The winner of that game moves on to meet No. 1 St. Bernard in Uncasville on Thursday.
The Centaurs set themselves up for a possible .500 finish with a 61-51 win over Bacon Academy earlier in the week.
“I told them that I wasn’t trying to nitpick and that, yes, we made States, but that isn’t the only goal. The goal is to get as many wins as possible and the guys came out and played hard. The final score was in our favor and it worked out for us,” said coach Donte Adams.
The Centaurs have been slow starters all season long and weren’t exactly quick out of the gates in Colchester.
But they did own a 30-21 advantage at the half over the Bobcats.
Hunter Larson and Brady Ericson each had eight points at the break.
Bacon did close to within as few as four points in the second half but Larson had an even better final 16 minutes than he did for the first 16.
He finished with 11 second half points to give him a game-high 19 for the night.
Ericson finished with 12 while Garrett Bushey contributed 10 points, six rebounds, four blocks and three assists.
The Centaurs also gave sophomore Lucas Quercia his first career varsity start and he responded with nine points, three rebounds and an assist.
Unfortunately, the Centaurs couldn’t make key defensive stops and Windham took advantage.
Anthony Green held Woodstock at bay as he came into the final quarter with 12 points and put 13 more on the board to finish with a game-high 25. Tahi Jones and Malcolm Hunter combined to be the first half problems for Woodstock. Jones scored 10 of his 14 points and Hunter 10 of his 12 as Windham led 31-25 at the break.
Ericson led the Centaurs with 15 points and Larson added nine.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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captions:
Lucas Theriaque (4th from left) joins the podium after his second-place finish in the 165-pound weight class at the Class M state wrestling championships. The winner of the division, Matt Gish of Portland, is to Theriaque’s right. Photo by Cahan Quinn/Woodstock Academy.
The Woodstock Academy 4x400m relay team of, from left: Juliet Allard, Talia Tremblay, Emma Weitknecht and Julia Coyle will be headed to the New England indoor track Championships. Photo by Josh Welch/Woodstock Academy.
Maxx Corradi helped power the Woodstock Academy boys’ hockey team to a 9-1 victory over Daniel Hand. Photo by Sam Clark/Woodstock Academy.