Preston Soriano popped up from the mat and couldn’t wait to get his legs in gear.
He leapt into assistant coach Nick Young’s waiting arms, then bear-hugged longtime Stratford wrestling coach Willie Nearhood before racing over to his mother, Regina, who had been shooting pictures across the mat.
Soriano knocked her to the floor in the celebration and they shared a laugh. She didn’t mind one bit. Her son was a state champ.
All those countless hours of cardio and drill work and treating the refrigerator like the enemy in order to make weight finally paid off for the Stratford wrestler. Soriano, a junior, went 3-0 in the state tournament to win the Class 5A title at 126 pounds on Saturday in the Civic Center of Anderson, edging Fort Dorchester’s Joseph Brown 8-6 with a reversal in the closing seconds of the second overtime.
“It’s still kind of unreal,” said Soriano, who wrestled at 132 and 138 pounds in the regular season. “It didn’t hit me until Sunday morning when I woke up and saw the medal and bracket in my room.”
Soriano had been close to the gold before, finishing third each of the last two years at 126 pounds. And the person he stood across from in the championship bout had denied him glory at the state level before.
Brown edged Soriano with an escape in the third overtime of a middle school state championship match at 104 pounds in 2016.
Soriano was pumped up for Saturday’s finale, which turned into another classic, after going 2-0 on Friday with air-tight decisions against Byrnes’ Colton Jam Heiselman (5-4) and Summerville’s Zach Jurey (1-0).
Soriano and Brown battled to a 5-5 deadlock in regulation and failed to decide a winner in a one-minute overtime period either.
Brown took a 6-5 advantage with an escape point in the second overtime but Soriano pulled even on a technical violation and scored the decisive points with a roll through when Brown tried to get him to his back.
“We’ve only wrestled one time since that (eighth-grade) match happened, which was about a month ago,” Soriano said. “I won that 2-1 but it could have gone either way. Nobody really scored. All those points were on a stalling or technical violation. I had a small chip on my shoulder for that.”
Soriano finished the season 50-2 and became the first Stratford state champion since TJ Deveaux went back-to-back in 2014 and 2015.
“It’s hard to beat guys multiple times but Preston was able to do that,” Stratford coach Willie Nearhood said. “He beat Jurey three times this season and had just beaten JB in the state duals. After you wrestle them, they come up with a better game plan.”
The Berkeley County School District had another state champion, too. Goose Creek High School senior Israel Schultz captured the Class 5A title at 120 pounds.
It was the final chance for Schultz to win it all and he had been close at least twice. He was third at 132 pounds in 2018, second at 120 in 2017 and a state qualifier in 2016.
Schultz was 3-0 and defeated Fort Dorchester’s Mateo Vargo 8-5 in the final on Saturday. On Friday, he edged Hillcrest’s Dylan O’Keefe (7-5) and Fort Mill’s Joshua Sturgeon (7-3).
The only other school district wrestler to make a final was Timberland’s Ian Balzano. The senior heavyweight finished runner-up in Class 2A-A.
Listed below are the placers from the BCSD:
Timberland, Class 2A-A
113 — Aaron Meree, third
126 – Corbin Proctor, fourth
145 – Carlos Tinajero, fourth
170 – Dominick Milligan, third
182 – Hunter Elswick, third
HW – Ian Balzano, second
Cane Bay, Class 5A
113 – Doug Metts, third
220 – Chase Smith, third
Goose Creek, Class 5A
120 – Israel Schultz, first
Stratford, Class 5A
126 – Preston Soriano, first
