The Xavier High wrestling team had seven wrestlers win medals for finishing in the top six of their respective weight classes as the Falcons won the CIAC State Open in Connecticut for the second consecutive year.

Four wrestlers went to the finals and two came home with State Open championships as Xavier won the Open title with a 54-point win over New Fairfield, 175½-121½ at the Floyd Little Athletic Center on the campus of Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven.

Xavier is coached by Mike Cunningham, who was inducted into the Connecticut Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2022.

This was a victory forged in the practice room and against competition in Wisconsin, Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts.

Xavier had wrestlers compete at the Beast of the East in December and at the War on the Shore in Maryland in January. The Falcons won the Methuen Invitational in late January and spent a weekend in early January in Wisconsin at the National High School Duals.

“We came back after last year and we had a good year (winning a Class L and State Open title),” Cunningham said. “They came back and focused, set some new goals. We made the schedule harder. They didn’t complain one time and did the work. I am proud of them.”

Sophomore Charles Weidman (182) and junior Raekwon Shabazz (106) each won their first State Open titles with teammates Kyle Levesque (132) and Anthony Basile (138) each finishing second.

Weidman (40-4) handed Joshua Nieroda of Suffield/Windsor Locks (32-1) his first loss of the season with a 14-5 victory in the finals. Weidman gave up just one point in his first three victories in the tournament. Shabazz (39-2) beat RHAM junior Ben Fournier by technical fall, 18-3.

Levesque dropped a 4-0 decision to Killingly’s undefeated senior Kaden Ware (41-0) in the 132-pound finals while Basile lost to East Hartford sophomore Jaeckez Mendez (31-0) in the final at 138 pounds, 5-2. Basile advanced to the final with a 2-1 win in triple OT in the semifinals over Montville’s James Linder

Xavier’s Braylon Gonzalez (113) finished third. He went six minutes with two-time Open champion Isaiah Adams of Avon in the semifinals. Max Morse (145) won four matches and finished fifth, pinning Brien McMahon’s Xavier Hernandez to secure a berth to next weekend’s New England championships in Providence.

The top five wrestlers in each weight class moved onto the New England tournament.

“We’ve wrestled six-minute matches the whole year. It wasn’t new to us,” Shabazz said.

“It’s pretty remarkable what (Xavier) did,” New Fairfield High coach Paul Musso said. “It is just lot of hard work on their part. Hats off to Mike (Cunningham) and (assistant coach) Kareem (Small). They’ve set the bar really high. Come and get it. Their kids wrestled good, they’re all young.

“He (Cunningham) goes to different tournaments and challenges his kids all of the time. Hats off to them because they are making Connecticut (wrestling) better,” Musso said.

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Posted by the Connecticut Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, February 25, 2023