The York University Lions wrestling team competed at its second meet of the season on Sunday at the TMU Pat Bolger Open. The precursor to this week's York Open saw the Lions earn another medal, a silver from current York female athlete of the week Prabhleen Randhawa in the 65kg category and a bronze from rookie Erica Liang in the 62kg weight class.
Randhawa won three of her four matches en route to silver. She defeated Ayla Thurston of Lakehead by fall in round one (1:44). Despite losing to Alyah Mayali by a 5-4 decision in the second round, Randhawa rebounded to beat Western's Rachelle Mao by fall (0:45) in round three. She then received a bye to the silver medal match, where she beat, by a 10-8 decision, Allison Accetta, also of Western.
Liang lost both her matches, but was able to win a bronze medal. She lost by fall at the 0:56 second mark to Guelph's Emily Youngins. She then lost by a 10-0 technical decision Mansi Asthana of Brampton's Independent Wrestling Club.
McMaster Open bronze medal winner Stephan Niron was unable to earn hardware for a second consecutive week. He received a bye in round one before losing to Brock's Matteo Romano in round two, before falling to McMaster's Rivas Gonzalez.
Overall, the Lions registered 14 team points, with 12 coming from the two medal winners. The other two came from Ali Dahcha, who finished in fifth place in the men's 90kg category. He won his opening round match by fall just 31 seconds over Mahmoud Alaswad of Western. After falling in the quarter-final, he bounced back to defeat his next two opponents – Austin Murray of Guelph by tech fall (10-0) and by fall at 1:07 over Western's Luca Roma. He lost the consolation semi-final by decision (12-6) to Ajay Guitard before winning the fifth-place match by injyury default.
The Lions will host the York Open on Nov. 16 in the Tait McKenzie Centre fieldhouse. Competition runs from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, with the Lions two graduating athletes, Kelly Nguyen and Daniyal Asim, will be honoured in a pre-meet ceremony.
