OAKLEAF - An 11 second pin by heavyweight Jordan Mitchell was the gamewinning dunk, walk-off home run, soccer penalty kick, football field goal or whatever cliche you want to call the buzzer beater in wrestling as Oakleaf High grappled away a 214-208 win over Creekside High in the district 1-3A championship held February 16 at Oakleaf High School.

“The last time we wrestled, he did the same thing and, I guess, I did the same thing today,” said Mitchell, who pinned Creekside’s Dominic Deverteuil in the district 1-3A duals final, won by Creekside over Oakleaf, but in 14 seconds in January. “I’ve always dreamed about being the final match of a tournament with the whole team behind me. It happened.”

For first year coach Rory Roderick, who is an Oakleaf High wrestling alum, to get a district title in his home gym as a coach was a special moment.

“I kind of don’t pay attention to the scores along the way because I want the guys to just wrestle their best and focus on scoring points,” said Roderick. “I could hear the announcements giving update and kind of knew it would be close and it would be us and Creekside same as in the duals tournament. During the week, we had no talk about districts, but let’s wrestle like we wrestle and get to regions.”

Roderick credited his assistants; Bryce Taylor and John Powers, for keeping the team focused.

“We were the team when I was here with seven guys on the entire team and maybe two or three able to get to regions,” said Roderick. “To have eight in the final, two for third and fourth and winning a majority of finals is credit to we the entire community; coaches, parents, everyone involved in wanting to be on a winning team. And, we have spoken it into existence.”

With both teams within five points of each at the start of the finals, Oakleaf exploded with four of five wins in the first five matches to put Creekside on its heels.

Roderick got a feather in the cap of sorts by joining multiple district title champions Clay High, in Class 1A, and Fleming Island, formerly in Class 3A, now 2A with their first team title. Clay won their 23rd title while Fleming Island won its first 2A district title on top of a decade of 3A district titles.

Clay, in district 4-1A, won with a whopping 325-160.5 score over runnerup Palatka with 11 finalists; nine champions and a third placer. Keystone Heights had 10 wrestlers with Alyx Nichols fourth at 160 and Jason Bowden fourth at 126 as top finishers. In district 2-2A, Fleming Island beat out Lincoln 283-176.5 with Ridgeview fourth, Middleburg fifth and Orange Park seventh. Fleming Island had nine district champions. Ridgeview had Derrick Mosley at 220 (36-2) as district champion with thirds from Logan Keester at 160 and Trenton Manis at 285. Middleburg had two district runnerups; Riley Girgis at 126 and Logan Moore at 138. Orange Park got a second from Trevion Sermons at 160 and a third from Goeffrey Jules Delice at 195.

At 106, freshman Angel Rodriguez (25-6) opened with a 7-6 overtime win over Nease freshman Jaiden Zajni (23-8); and, at 113, freshman Ion Hortinela (19-8) pinned Nease’s Jason

Choi to push Oakleaf to the first place spot. Rodriguez scored his escape in the final overtime with just 2.4 seconds left in the match. Hortinela built a 6-1 lead before pinning Choi.

Bartram Trail 3A fourth placer Ethan Vugman did Oakleaf a favor by pinning Creekside’s Justin Umali at 120 before Oakleaf sophomore Keon Barrientos won a major decision over Creekside junior Connor Wright to boost the Knight’s top place spot.

“I had a little pressure on me as my sister Adrianna won her first district title earlier this week,” said Barrientos.

In one of the more dramatic matches of the tournament, Oakleaf senior Marcus McGee, 32-2, got a bit of revenge on Mandarin senior Jameel Smith, 38-1 and a Hammer Invite winner over McGee earlier in the season, with a 3-2 win at 132. Smith advanced with two pins in his early matches.

After a 0-0 first period with McGee unable to get a tilt on Smith twice, Smith scored a one-point escape off a whizzer to enter the third period with McGee under Smith to start. An escape at 1:32 tied the score at 1-1 before McGee pushed a single leg takedown out of bounds for no points. Starting neutral off the break, Smith got a stall warning and McGee kept pressing an elbow pass before hitting a single leg takedown for the win. Smith got one more point off an escape with 12 second left in the match.

“I’m sure we will face off again, maybe at regions,” said McGee. “I’ve been practice a lot, keeping my head on straight. Those guys before me; Angel, Ion, Keon, got us some momentum. We feed off the energy.”

Creekside scored points to close the top gap with a pin at 138, a runnerup at 145 and 152 and a 8-1 win over Oakleaf’s Roman Polinsky put Creekside in position to steal the title.

A loss at 182 over Oakleaf’s Onjel Carabello by Mandarin’s unbeaten Tony Carter (27-0) aided Creekside with Creekside’s Vincent Approbato beating Oakleaf’s Ben Gaddis 6-2 to set up Mitchell’s dramatic finish with both teams locked at 208-208.