FLEMING ISLAND - At their own home gym, the Fleming Island High wrestling team answered some questions about their fitness into Class 2A with a resounding 437 team point victory at the Keystone Memorial Invitational with runnerup Heritage second at a distant 275 points and Doral Academy third at 274. Class 2A power Tallahassee Lincoln, 15th in 2A last year, was third at 269 in the tight pack of chasers for second place.

“We have wrestled in the same region as Fleming Island in the way back past,” said Lincoln head coach Mike Crowder, who is joined by Fleming Island in the region 1-2A tournament. “Them returning to 2A only raised the bar for us as far as preparation. Coach P.J. Cobbert and I are long time friends and we coached some national teams together so it will be challenging for the second half of the season.”

Cobbert, who has corraled a young bunch of new faces for the race to the Class 2A summit, called the meet a good look at what they may face.

“It’s a grind, a meet like this especially with our district duals tournament the day before,” said Cobbert, who incidentally, won his district duals title the previous day also at the Fleming Island gym. “We want to see how the young pups do under pressure and a little beat up and wore out. I think we did well.”

District 2-2A is Fleming lsland, Middleburg, Orange Park, Ridgeview, Chiles, Lincoln, Columbia and Leon. Fleming Island beat Chiles on Friday to advance both teams with Chiles upsetting Lincoln in their Friday match. Lincoln lost to Pace High in the region 1-2A Duals semifinal last year. Pace will host the 2022 Duals regions on Thurs., Jan. 13 with Fleming Island wrestling Gulf Breeze and Pace wrestling Chiles with the winners to square off the same night to advance to the region final at Osceola High on January 21.

At Clay High, the Blue Devils ran the table to their fifth duals district title with resounding wins over Bolles, Florida Deaf, Union County and Baker County. Clay will face Episcopal at their region 1-1A duals regions at Yulee High on Thurs., Jan. 13. Baker County will face Yulee in the other semifinal with Suwannee vs. South Walton and Rocky Bayou vs. Wakulla in the upper bracket. Teams will head to Osceola High on Jan. 21-22 for the region finals, duals Final Four and championship matches.

Note: Keystone Heights finished fifth at Clay.

Also for Clay, a road trip to Class 1A defending champion Somerset Academy’s annual Shuffle tournament yielded a half point win, 339-338.5, for the hosts as the Blue Devils put a little muscle on the road after winning their duals. 3A-Cypress Bay was third at 270. Clay was 10th in Class 1A last year.

Oakleaf High, in district 1-3A with former 2A Creekside, finished second to Creekside after beating Bartram Trail in the second place match. Creekside beat Oakleaf 45-26 for the title forcing Oakleaf to beat Bartram Trail for the second place finish to advance into the regions. Oakleaf beat Mandarin 42-39 to advance to the championship match.

At the Fleming Island High Keystone Invitational, Fleming Island had champions with Jayce Paridon at 113 pinning Suwannee’s 28-1 Topher Peason; Kaden Schaefer at 138 winning 6-2 over Doral’s Enrique Sanchez (19-4), Matthew Kotler at 145 beating Suwannee’s Tyson Musgrove (27-3), 4-3, Ronan Bozeman at 160 beating Orange Park’s Trevion Sermons 4-2, Joshua Sandoval at 170 beating Columbia’s Joseph Rice 8-7 despite losing a contact lens, and Jhoel Robinson at 182 winning by injury default over Heritages’ Vicente Angel Ramirez-Ellis after rifling through his lineup with three pins; one at 25 seconds. Sandoval also had a 25 second pin his quarterfinal against Lincoln’s Keller Shea. Paridon had four pins in four matches; one also at 25 second.

Middleburg and Oakleaf finished 10th and 11th at Keystone with Ridgeview 15th and Orange Park 18th.

The Broncos had finalists in Wyatt Leduc at 120, lost to Julian Montero of Doral and Tucker Cody at 220, losing to Lincoln’s Omarion LaRoach by pin.

Oakleaf’s Keon Barrientos was fourth at 126 for the Knights’ highest finisher. The Knights also finished second to Creekside in the district duals tournament on Thursday and will travel to Creekside for the region 1-3A tournament.

Trevion Sermons was Orange Park’s highest finisher losing in the 160 final to Fleming Island’s Ronan Bozeman, 4-2.

Ridgeview heavyweight Derrick Mosley was a finalist losing by pin to Bolles’ Jack Pyburn.

Lincoln had two champions; LaRoach over Cody of Middleburg and Cayden Bevis at 195 with a tech fall over Shawn Raggins of Columbia.

Doral had champions at 106 with Christian Vazquez pinning Fleming Island’s Shane Duhaylungsod, Julian Montero at 120 beating Wyatt Leduc of Middleburg 5-3, and Jose Gutierrez at 126 beating Chiles’ Garret Marschka 7-2.

The rest of the champions were Kevin Kerns of Deltona who beat Austin McKinney of Suwannee 9-7 at 132 and Jacob Lutz of Nease who beat Connor Edwards of Lincoln 10-3.