Men's Fargo Preview

Team Mass brings momentum after an impressive 2024 performance

By AJ Traub

Team Mass men's wrestlers prepare for back-to-back tournaments

With 20 wrestlers providing points in the junior men’s freestyle category, Team Massachusetts vaulted to 16th place (32 points) in the U.S. Marine Corps Nationals tournament last year.

The performance, highlighted by Elliott Humphries earning second place at 165 pounds and Matthew Botello finishing fourth at 132, is something coach Matt Dehney said was “special” and “will be hard to match.”

Humphries returns at 175 this year for his final high school contest after that inspirational run. Though he does not base expectations on previous tournaments, he leads a group looking to prove Massachusetts can be formidable again.

In an early round where just seven of the 64 matches at the 165-pound weight class went full time, the unseeded Humphries took a 20-19 lead with 12 seconds left in a stunning decision over New Jersey’s 12-seeded Jordan Chapman. Three decisions and two technical falls later, he was under the lights of the FargoDome’s finals stage.

“The run he made at this tournament was one of the most inspirational accomplishments I have seen in my coaching career,” Dehney said of Humphries. “What a special moment for all us coaches, and I am grateful to have been there.”

Behind the breakout performance that started the Northfield Mt. Hermon grappler’s senior year — which included a high school national title and Peckham Scholarship — were all his Bay State brethren.

“Everyone’s been there for me. Having my own teammates, my NMH teammates,” he said, “We’ve had these dreams together… I want my best friends to go out there and win it, and me too. Last year when I was out there I made it to the finals, I heard from everyone on the team.

“I knew I had the whole state behind me.”

Having his NMH coach Zach Bates with him for one more time is a motivating factor for Humphries as well, and he is grateful for the close-knit dynamic of the Commonwealth crew.

“It’s a good community, Humphries said. “Not every state gets the opportunity to practice together. That’s a really unique thing about our state.”

165-pounder Ryan Meier has attended Fargo camps in New Jersey where he goes to school at Blair Academy, and says the collaborative nature of Team Massachusetts is different.

He and Julian Rios are going to Fargo for their fourth time, looking to push through and reach the podium for the first time.

Rios represented Phillips Academy in Andover as he finished fourth, second, and third at prep nationals. Meier is a three-time Northeast Regional champion and a prep state champion in New Jersey.

Fargo is just a different experience.

“A big thing with Fargo is it’s a three-day tournament where you do have to weigh in on the third day,” Rios said. “It really does test your stamina and endurance… From the first whistle to the last whistle you have to be working as hard as possible. It’s a grueling three days of matches.”

Meier rarely gets opportunities to rep his home state, making this tournament that much more special. He has grown as a grappler in both his states, and hopes the experiences prepared him for a bigger run this time around.

“That first year I went, it was an eye-opening experience. I lost first round,” he said. “I rattled off eight or nine rounds, made the blood round. Second year I went, ‘For me to get rolling, I have to make it far on the top side.’ That back side is brutal, you’re going every 30 minutes, every hour.”

Botello won five matches before a loss put him in the consolation bracket last season, and earned another win to reach the third place match. Though he is not returning, Team Mass adds two 2025 New England champions in Franklin’s 106-pounder Johnny Woodall (16U team) and Andover’s 138-pounder Yandel Morales (junior team).

Alex Bajoras is a two-time New England finalist, but broke through to win high school nationals this spring. The St. John’s Prep heavyweight won five freestyle matches last year at Fargo and placed sixth in Greco-Roman.

He and West Springfield’s Musa Tamaradze (second place at 120 pounds) paced a Greco-Roman team that finished 23rd.

Bajoras is looking to make it All-American status in both tournaments this time, a rare six-day wrestling grind at an elite level (freestyle is three days, then two days of Greco-Roman after a break).

“You can’t really describe it,” Bajoras said. “I went in there last year thinking it would be similar to NHSCAs. You’re walking around with freak athletes. I’ll see a guy with a Penn State offer. You can’t imagine it. I went out there and faced the best in the country. I beat some, and some showed me there are top dogs out there.”

He trains with another two-time New England finalist, Haverhill’s Matt Harrold, who is wrestling both tournaments at Fargo too.

Declan Bligh (Roxbury Latin) enters his third Fargo tournament, wrestling freestyle and Greco-Roman each time. Before his trip to North Dakota, though, his journey has a stop in Italy where he competes for Ireland.

“In Europe they wrestle a lot more relaxed. Less pressure,” Bligh said. “Sometimes I’d use that in my wrestling, take a more tactical approach rather than going all-out.”

The experience going to Fargo the past two years, wrestling overseas where he sees other styles, and coming in with momentum give Bligh hope this can be his best Fargo performance so far.

He knows that staying for the third tournament, the Greco-Roman brackets, can be isolating. Six days of wrestling matchups and several weigh-ins make the tournament as tough as it is.

“Even going to Fargo during the summer, not everyone wants to be doing that,” Bligh said. “It’s a credit to anyone who goes. You have to train and spend time out there.

”It’s a sacrifice.”