NORTH BERWICK — It had been a few years since the Noble wrestling team was able to claim bragging rights over its rivals from Marshwood.

That fact wasn’t lost on this Noble squad — and the Knights made sure to change that on Thursday night.

The Knights won nine of the 13 matches on their way to an impressive 48-21 win over the visiting Hawks under the light at Noble High School.

“It’s huge. We know Marshwood-Noble is always huge, and our kids really get psyched up for it and I think the Marshwood kids do too,” said Noble coach Kevin Gray. “We were just happy to do what we were supposed to do which was stay in good position and continue to wrestle hard the Noble way. We were lucky enough to come out on top in some of those matches where we knew it was going to be tight.”

Gray, who is in his first season as Noble’s head coach, admitted that he was pumped up for the match with the rival Hawks.

“It was great. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a little more behind it,” said Gray. “I thought about it all day today at work, trying to figure out where we might put kids, where they might put kids. It was a chess match both ways and we just got lucky enough to have a couple of those matches go our way.”

Marshwood coach Matt Rix knew his team was in for a battle and gave credit to the Knights for coming out on top.

“Good for them. They have a good senior bunch, good crowd and it’s tough coming in here with a full crowd. You’ve got to be on it because they come here to wrestle. These guys are movers and shakers, they’re catchers and you’ve got to be ready.”

Noble won almost every match that was considered a “toss-up” heading into the meet. John Grenier picked up a hard-fought 6-1 win over Marshwood standout David Spinney at 152 pounds, and Sam Martel rallied for a 10-5 win over Liam Coomey at 126 pounds in two of the more anticipated matchups on Thursday.

Grenier was excited to get a match against a competitor like Spinney, who finished second at states last season.

“I wanted to know where he was at this year so far, obviously by the time states comes it’s going to be a little different for both of us,” said Grenier. “But I wanted to get a feel of how he’s wrestling this year and he gets to see how I wrestled tonight. Luckily, it came out in our favor tonight.”

It was a special night for the Noble seniors who got to celebrate “Senior Night” and came out with the win over their biggest rival.

“(It was like) nothing I’ve ever been in before,” said senior Hil Keisker. “Being a captain this year running out under the light is always different, and then being that it’s Marshwood, our rivals, it was just indescribable.”

Keisker was happy to contribute to the big win with a pin of Marshwood’s Aaron Penney at 170 pounds.

“I got in on my double and I just continued up, got to the half and from there I wanted six. All that was going through my head was ‘get six, get six, we want this win,’” said Keisker.

The Knights got some motivation from walking the halls of Noble High School, according to Keisker.

“We were told in our own high school that we’re not that good and everything, that Marshwood was going to come out and blow us out tonight,” said Keisker. “This (win) was a big confidence booster. We’re seen in our school and in the entire state as one of the top (teams) now and we have that confidence. We’re in the practice room working hard, and we know that we have to work hard to win matches like this and to go into states and compete and hopefully win it in the end.”

Grenier was happy to get a win over the Hawks in front of a large crowd that was loud throughout the match.

“It’s crazy. You could feel the energy from the school that we haven’t felt in a long time for any sport. We haven’t beaten Marshwood in any sport in quite a long time so it was definitely great for all the seniors and everyone on the team,” Grenier said.

The match started at 138 pounds with Marshwood’s Matt Thompson picking up a 10-6 win over Duncan McGilvery to put the Hawks up 3-0 early on.

“It was a good start. A lot of times that kind of sets a tone for how the meet goes, but not tonight,” said Rix.

The Knights would reel off five straight wins after the opening loss. Logan Rendell started things off with a pin at 145 pounds to make it 6-3 in favor of the home squad.

Next up would be the Grenier-Spinney clash which was a decision for the Noble senior to make it 9-3.

Matt Beerworth made it 15-3 with a win by fall over Marshwood’s Joey Wessling at 160 pounds, and Keisker’s pin at 170 pushed the lead to 21-3.

The Knights would get six more points at 182 when Jake Mulligan accepted a forfeit to make it a 27-3 lead with seven bouts remaining.

Marshwood stopped the bleeding for a moment when Dylan Strong pinned Noble’s Collin Cyr in the 195-pound match. The win would cut the lead to 27-9.

James Thompson made it back-to-back pins for the Hawks with a fall over Blake Ouellette at 220, and Zach Mercier pushed the pin streak to three with a fall at 285 over Pat Exel to trim the lead to 27-21 with just four matches left.

The upset of the night came at 113 pounds where Noble’s Jaden Balcewicz was able to throw Marshwood freshman standout Sean Moriarty to his back and picked up the fall with 15 seconds left in the second period.

“It’s a huge win. He’s been working hard trying to get himself in better positions. He makes a lot of mistakes, so we’ve been working on trying to minimize those. He’s a great wrestler but he’s got to minimize those mistakes,” said Gray of Balcewicz. “You saw it early in the match, he almost had a couple of them where he got out of position. We told our guys hit the moves that you know are going to be perfect in that moment, and he hit that lateral and that was the perfect moment and he was able to finish it. It was good for him.”

The big win at 113 pushed the lead to 33-21 and Josh Cote would clinch the victory with a first-period fall over Carsen Goodwin which made it an 18-point lead with just two matches remaining.

Martel picked up the decision over Coomey at 126 and Joe Pilecki closed the match out with a bang as he pinned Brandon Sandler at 132.

Gray was thrilled with his team’s performance but also made sure to let his guys know they had plenty of work to do as they prepare for the postseason.

“Our kids did a great job tonight, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop working hard — we can’t just sit on our laurels now and think we’re going to roll through anybody. We’ve got to continue to work hard,” said Gray.

Rix is hoping Thursday night’s loss to Noble will help his team in the long run.

“Those are key matches coming into regionals, you know, positioning and knowing what to expect out of them. I know some of these guys have wrestled (their opponents) in junior high and they’re like, ‘oh, I beat him in junior high,’ well this isn’t junior high anymore,” said Rix. “Now we’ve got something to work on. It’s good, the pressure is off and we know what we need to work on … we’ll see what happens.”

Grenier knows that the Hawks and several other teams will be gunning for the Knights when the postseason rolls around.

“We’ve just got to keep pushing harder. Just because we beat them tonight doesn’t mean we can take them lightly, I mean regionals is right around the corner so we’ve definitely got to work our butts off,” Grenier said.

— Sports Editor Pat McDonald can be reached at pmcdonald@journaltribune.com or at 282-1535 ext. 322. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.

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