Brookville wrestles to first Big Orange Tournament crown

Brookville’s wrestling team, which will go for its 43rd consecutive Seminole District wrestling tournament championship this Saturday at home, captured its first-ever Big Orange Tournament title this past weekend at William Byrd.

The event featured plenty of the same competition that will be on hand for the Region III tournament a week from Saturday, including wrestlers from Northside, Staunton River and Rockbridge County out of the Blue Ridge District.

"It’s been going on for 32 years and it’s always strong," Bees coach Don Shuler said. "There were 17 teams from the whole Roanoke area, including Franklin County and Grundy and Hidden Valley. There area a lot of good teams and it’s tough to win it. It’s so well rounded."

Brookville totaled 202½ points to beat runner-up Franklin County (183½) and Grundy, which had dealt the Bees (15-2) one of their dual meet defeats in the Brookville Duals. Christiansburg is the only other team to beat Brookville in head-to-head dual matches this season, in the final of the Blue Demons’ Duals.

The Bees wrestled their first two tournaments without five of their regulars, who were playing on the state championship football team.

They still placed second at Turner Ashby and third at St. Christopher’s in December before finishing runner-up in the Christiansburg Duals, winning the Black & Blue Division of the Virginia Duals and the Brookville Duals, by beating Jefferson Forest in last Wednesday’s Seminole District regular-season-ending dual meet.

"Winning the duals is always a big deal because of the competition," Shuler said. "This was probably the biggest win [of the season] because it’s the first time we’ve ever done it. We’ve been going since at least 1985."

Brookville advanced six wrestlers to the championship finals and came away with four winners.

"Franklin County had five and Grundy had five [in the finals] so it was kind of tight," Shuler said. "We had a 15-point lead going into the finals. They had to pin everybody and we had to lose all of ours."

Landon Curry shut out Hidden Valley’s Tim Yang in the 113-pound final before Trung Duong scored a major decision over Cave Spring’s Travis Hodges at 126.

At 132, Luke Stewart lost on a last-second takedown to Grundy’s Justin Street for a 6-5 decision. Josh Lancaster later dropped his 145-pound final before the Bees saved their best for last, with Derek Thurman and Victor Montalbano remaining undefeated a 182 and 220 pounds, respectively.

Thurman, seeded No. 1 in Virginia’s Group AA rankings, edged Salem’s undefeated Devin Smith, a two-time state place winner, 6-4 in overtime in their final. Thurman escaped in the closing 10 seconds of the third period to force overtime before fighting off a hold to record the winning takedown.

"Devin went for an arm drag and Derek just moved his arm out of the way and went right through him and took advantage with a double-leg tackle," Shuler said.

Montalbano, who lost to Salem’s defending champion Jake Semones 1-0 in last year’s 215-pound state final, nipped Franklin County’s Mason Maples 2-1 in the 220-pound final. He has now beaten three wrestlers ranked in the state in the past three weeks to stay unbeaten and atop the state rankings, improving to 34-0.