By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Sports Editor

CHELSEA – The Chelsea Hornets played host to several impressive wrestling teams during a quad match on Tuesday, Jan. 8, featuring Homewood, Oxford and Fort Payne.

Despite the challenging competition, the Hornets went on to compete against both Fort Payne and Oxford, and didn’t skip a beat, as they were able to pick up a sweep by taking down both opponents.

Chelsea started with a 42-21 victory against Fort Payne and then edged out Oxford 45-34 in a tightly-contested matchup.

Against Fort Payne, Chelsea lost just four of their 14 matches, with one of those being a forfeit, one being a tiebreaker loss and two being pins.

In the 113-pound weight class, Chelsea was able to follow up a loss in the 106-pound division with a pin of its own from Adam Byerman for six points.

Fort Payne then grabbed a second pin in three weight classes when Cote Blalock took down David Kerr in the 120-pound weight class.

That, however, was followed up with two tight decision wins from Chelsea’s Casey Stewart and Gavin Rigor in the 126-pound and 132-pound weight classes, respectively, to pick up six more combined points.

A forfeit in the 138-pound division gave Fort Payne six more points, but Chelsea answered with 18 combined points in the next three weight classes and put six points on the board in five of the final six weight classes wrestled.

Jamian Gandy (145), Hunter Guarnieri (160), Sam Ingram (170) and Welsey Pouncey (220) all picked up pins, while Jackson Jones was able to get a forfeit win.

Against Oxford, the Hornets were able to overcome forfeiting both the 138-pound and 152-pound weight classes to pull off a tight 11-point win.

Through the first four weight classes, the two teams were able to combine for 10 points starting with a pin from Oxford’s Garrett Howell in the 106-pound division for six points.

That was followed up by a 15-2 major-decision win for Byerman in the 113-pound weight class before Kerr picked up a pin in the 120-pound division.

Oxford, however, responded with wins in the next five consecutive weight classes, picking up a major-decision victory, two pins and two forfeit wins for a total of 34 points to that point in the match.

Fortunately for Chelsea, that was the last time the Yellow Jackets put any points on the board thanks to a dominant final six matches.

Ingram, Robert Montgomery, Pouncey and Jackson Jones all picked up pins for 24 points to give the Hornets 34, which was even with Oxford’s total.

The Hornets, however, got a forfeit win from Joshua Gore in the 182-pound weight class and a technical-fall win from Guarnieri in the 160-pound weight class to put the difference-making 11 points on the board.