December 30, 2006

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Steve Ratley continued his pinning spree on the second day of the Southern Scuffle Saturday to highlight the Virginia Tech wrestling team's appearance in the event being held at the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center. While no one took home individual titles, two Hokies - Ratley and Eric Decker - placed in the top eight and Ratley finally broke the record he's been chasing since the beginning of the season.

Ratley wasted little time in breaking the record, picking up his 16^th pin of the season in his first match of the day. After recording three first-period pins on Friday, Ratley got the record-breaker 18 seconds into the second period, sticking Michael Metzger of Lock Haven at the 3:18 mark. Ratley surpassed Sean Gray (2001-02) and David Hoffman (2004-05) for the school's single-season pins mark of 15.

He wasted even less time in expanding on his record as he staved off elimination with another pin, this one coming against fifth-seeded Phil Moricone of Edinboro at the 3:46 mark.

He then dropped a tough 4-3 decision to eighth-seeded Neal Martin of Appalachian State to drop into the seventh-place match. There, he fell 4-0 to ninth-seeded Lloyd Rogers of Chattanooga to take eighth place.

He is now 20-7 on the season with 17 of his 20 wins coming via pin.

At 165 pounds, Decker picked up a 5-3 win over William Garvin of Tennessee-Chattanooga, and then picked up an injury default victory over Minnesota's Scott Glasser. He beat Jeremy Larsen of Minnesota 11-6 and then lost to Keegan Mueller of North Carolina 2-1. In the fifth-place match, he lost to Chris Vondruska of Ohio State, 6-2, to take sixth place.

After going 2-0 on Friday, Steve Borja was soundly beaten by second-seeded Raymond Jordan of Minnesota, 10-2, to drop him into the consolation bracket at 184 pounds where he was defeated 5-2 by Chattanooga's Josh Edmondson.

At 149 pounds, Jon Bonilla-Bowman was eliminated with a 2-2 mark when John Cox of Navy picked up an 11-0 major decision over Bonilla-Bowman.

Yesterday, Justin Staylor (wrestling unattached), Mark Czarny and Jim Powers were eliminated from the double-elimination tournament.

The Hokies (4-2) will return to the mat as a team for the first time in over a month when they travel to Athens to take on Ohio University on Jan. 3, 2007 for a 7 p.m. match.