Taqi Baker good to go, helps Woodstock wrestlers get past Sandwich

SANDWICH – Woodstock’s Taqi Baker wasn’t sure if he could wrestle during Thursday’s Kishwaukee River Conference dual meets at Sandwich.

He proved to be healthy enough to go, battling back from a prior injury to defeat Jakob Gruca by a 3-0 decision that helped the Blue Streaks get past Sandwich, 40-33.

“To be honest, I wasn’t fully planning on it,” Baker said. “It was really 50/50 to be honest. My coach was like, you know what, you don’t have to wrestle tonight, we’ve got 12 of the matches we are going to wrestle and we have to prepare for regionals.”

Baker figured he’d make a decision late Wednesday.

“So what I decided after practice yesterday was we’ll see how I feel after my warmup (tonight),” he said. “And sure enough, today I got a good warmup in and I was ready to go.”

Baker acknowledged that he didn’t realize he was hurt last Friday, but once his adrenalin faded. and he walked out of his school, there was pain and growing concern.

“I couldn’t walk regularly and it was really swollen the next day,” he said. “I just had to be patient and just take it a day at a time. Just a little rehab here and there. I was still very thankful to be able to practice leading up to this. Like this Monday I didn’t wrestle that much but was still able to get some cardio in. Once Tuesday hit I was like, you know, I think I’m going to be ready.”

And he was.

“It was a little scary at first but for the most part I stayed patient,” he said. “I stayed calm because it could potentially have been season ending, but I didn’t want to have that stigma. I wanted to stay hopeful.”

Woodstock junior Logan Spears pinned Sandwich’s Alton Spears at 157 pounds and was among his team’s eight winners.

“Tonight, I just wanted to go in and put in the offense and score a lot of points,” he said. “Something is going around in my family (illness) and I’m sick. I got very gassed but I just made sure to stay on top and get to some of my turns.”

After finishing eighth at frosh/soph state a year ago, Spears is making major strides in the varsity lineup this winter.

“Logan has been one of our team leaders and is really starting to open up his game,” Woodstock coach Eric Hunt said. “He got a major win tonight, which we weren’t expecting. We were expecting a regular (decision) win.”

Hooked on the sport since he was five years old, Spears has attacked the weight room with hours.

“The difference between last year was me getting in the weight room and now being stronger,” he said. “Now I’m able to compete with the upperclassmen and my goal this year is to qualify for state and hopefully go from there.”

Woodstock’s Gabe Sarnella (150) and Edgar Arana (175) had pins, Dominic Osinski won by tech fall, Erik Hansen (190) won by major and Austin Sciluffo (113) and Everett Flannery (285) prevailed by forfeit.

Jack Forth (138) and Cooper Corder (144) had pins for Sandwich. Also winning for the Indians were Josh Lehman (165) by tech fall, Colton Stone (132) by major and Hunter Whitecotton (106) and Devon Blanchard (215) by forfeit.

“We’re winding down at the end of the year,” Sandwich coach Derek Jones said. “We have a tough schedule all year long and we’ve backed off a little bit. As great as it is to win conference duals, we’re more concerned with the state series and we got a couple kids out with injury or illness or whatever. But every team is going through that right now. I thought it was competitive. We needed a couple things to go our way that didn’t. They were the better team tonight for sure.”

Sandwich actually was the better team earlier when it defeated Woodstock North, 40-27. The Thunder were in town to also wrestle Plano. The Reapers had a skin condition or illness break out within the program and did not appear.

“Plano is having some kind of skin issues,” Thunder coach Mike Miller said. “We found out once we got here so it was just doing JV matches at the beginning and then Woodstock wrestled already and then we wrestled and then the girls wrestled.”

His program is quite young but growing.

“I mean, we have a lot of guys out right now,” Miller said. “We’re a program that two years ago we had six kids in the program so we have more now but we still have a lot of younger guys, freshmen and sophomores. Sandwich was nice enough to get some of our JV guys in there for matches. It’s hard to be competitive when you have so many holes.”

Miller appreciates how his kids compete.

“All guys gave a good effort,” he said. “This year it’s just a learning year basically. Getting ready for next year. We’re just getting a few matches in and in a couple more weeks we’ll have regionals. We got a good group and are just building year by year. Hoping to get a couple through the sectionals. We’ll see what happens.”