Oxford Hills, Winslow take home KVAC wrestling titles

Edward Little’s Evan Madigan drops Oceanside’s Jesse Knowlton in the 144-pound final Jan. 24 at the KVAC championships in Augusta. Madigan won by technical fall, 18-3. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer) Purchase this image

AUGUSTA — Oxford Hills and Winslow got the postseason off to a good start at the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference wrestling championships on Saturday.

Oxford Hills (176.5 points) took home the Class A title, while Winslow (121 points) won the Class B crown at Cony High School.

“It feels good,” said Oxford Hills coach Tony Stevens. “The kids worked hard all week to build up for this. It’s fantastic.”

Edward Little (156.5) was the Class A runner-up, followed by Camden Hills (125.5), Mt. Blue (96) and Nokomis (84.5). Medomak Valley (116.5) was runner-up in Class B, followed by Belfast (101), Mount View (96) and Oceanside (57.5).

The Vikings were led by Chris Levesque, who won the 285-pound title with a 2-0 decision over Cael Hamilton of Skowhegan. Oxford Hills had two second-place finishers in James Terry (120 pounds) and River Brackett (113), as well as third-place finishers in Landon Kovales (157), Curtis Fogg (150) and Tristan Atwell (126).

“We had an expectation that we were going to come in here, and we were going to win it,” said Fogg, a senior who recently notched his 100th career win. “We’ve had some rough tournaments in the past. We had a rough second or third round, but we came back, fought hard and that’s all I can ask from my guys.”

Saturday was a breakout performance for Winslow, with Quincy Nesbitt winning the 126-pound championship with a 9-6 decision over Peter Gove of Gardiner. The Black Raiders also had a second-place finish from Liam McKenney (106) and third-place finishes from Jonathan Kesaris (165) and Owen Vigue (120).

“I’m kind of surprised about this year, but the team wrestled well,” said Winslow coach Dustin Vigue. “I can’t say I thought we were going to win a title today, but I thought they could be contenders. Every year, our feeder program is just dumping more kids in and they’re ready to compete.”

Added Nesbitt: “It shows us that we can we states and win regionals, which was kind of up in the air (before KVACs). To win today shows we can win against the best teams in the state.”

Other KVAC champions include Cooper Blair, Evan Madigan (144) and Isaac Martin-Poole (175) of Edward Little; Angus Ward (106), Reilly Turner-Watts (150) and Justin Batty (165) of Camden Hills; Grady Pease (190) and Shamus Pease (215) of Medomak Valley; Dominic Simpson (120) of Belfast and Tony Vieira (138) of Mount View; and Preston Garland (113) and Dillon Gray (157) of Mt. Blue.

Vigue was named the KVAC B Coach of the Year, while Edward Little’s Ben Madigan won the KVAC A award. Batty, who notched his 150th career pin in his win over Skowhegan’s Henry Sites in the finals, was named KVAC A Most Outstanding Wrestler. Vieira, who beat Noah Parenteau of Belfast by an 8-4 decision, was the KVAC B Most Outstanding Wrestler.