Menlo-Atherton, Half Moon Bay to wrestle for Peninsula Athletic League Bay title

Wednesday afternoon, Menlo-Atherton co-athletic director Paul Snow told the Daily Journal that the Bears’ match with Half Moon Bay, originally postponed for COVID reasons, would not be competed because of logistical problems.

By Thursday morning, the match was back on.

“The hardest part was locking the date down,” said Ray Reyes, PAL director of wrestling and head coach at El Camino.

The match between the Bears and Cougars will be wrestled at South City during the PAL girls’ championships. Reyes said the hope is that there will be enough of a break between the preliminary rounds of the girls’ tournament and the championship matches, which will be streamed live on BAOSN.TV. If not, he said the boys would simple wrestle their matches off to the side.

“The plan is to treat it as a regular dual meet. Weigh-in at 3:30 (p.m.), wrestle at 4:30. Because the girls’ bracket is so small, we’ll need that break before the TV guys come in,” Reyes said. “Officials will already be there and since there are no fans allowed, and all the girls will be there, it should be fun.”

It is the most fair way to decide the PAL regular-season team title because there is a such a jumble at the top of the Bay Division standings. Half Moon Bay is 5-0 and the only undefeated team in the Bay. But both M-A and Burlingame have one loss, so a Bears win would mean a tri-championship, while a HMB victory gives the Cougars the outright title.

It took weeks for the schools to finally hammer out a time, date and place and it only came about during the PAL seeding meeting Wednesday night. Reyes said the initial plan was for the teams to wrestle on Tuesday, Feb. 15 — it was the only day on which the two schools could agree.

There was a thought of doing it Saturday during the PAL boys’ championship, but no one wanted that. There was also talk of wrestling on Sunday, but that was out of the question for HMB.

“Half Moon Bay was clear, ‘we can’t get our kids to come on a Sunday,’” Reyes said.

So the schools settled on the 15th. Reyes sent the plan to both PAL commissioner Terry Stogner and Central Coast Section wrestling director Duane Morgan.

As Reyes said, “That’s when the flags started flying.”

Reyes thought the idea would be in the clear, since next Tuesday is when “hardship matches” can take place. These are matches that feature a highly-ranked wrestler who, usually for injury reasons, missed a league championship tournament. They are given a last-chance grab at a CCS spot as they can wrestle the lowest-qualifying wrestler in that weight class from that league.

But CCS said the dual meet could not be wrestled on that day because it came after the official end of the regular season.

At that point, all parties agreed to the Friday afternoon matchup.