Nashua North's Zaeden Crocker, right, battles Widham's Nick Parker during the Titans' Division I quarterfinal win Saturday at North. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Ahhh, there’s nothing comparable in any sport to high school dual meet wrestling, where the forfeits giveth, and they also taketh away.

For Nashua North, they helped give the Titans a 42-33 win over Windham Saturday in the Division I quarterfinals.

“It’s tough,” North coach Chad Zibolis said. “His strong kids are in that middle weight class, where we have young kids that need a little bit of work. Our forfeits are where our strong kids are, Max Ackerman, Spencer Whiting, and Toby (Brown). We need to get those guys wrestling.

“Not filling the lineup is tough. They call it win by forfeit, and sometimes that’s the way it works, you know?”

No less than 30 of North’s 42 points came from weight classes where the Jaguars had no one to compete: 160, 170,195, 285 and 113.

North’s only 12 points from actual competition came from pins by Brown at 220 over Matthew Scharff, and, after being down 18-0, a pin from Cole Ducharme at 138 over the Jags’ Ben Hoyt.

The Jaguars lost two wrestlers this week, one held out due to a possible exposure, including senior captain Nick Antonucci at 160. And the Jags lost a 106-pounder who could have taken a forfeit at that weight class when North didn’t have one.

“Those things hurt big time,” Windham coach Tom Durrin said. “That’s part of sports. You’ve got to have the lineup. We just didn’t have enough lineup.

“I was proud of the way our kids wrestled, they wrestled tough at every single match.”

But things looked bad for North early on, as the Titans were down 30-6 after Windham’s Con Issac pinned North’s Dimitri Moreno at 152.

And even though he was down 33-18 after Nick Parker’s 8-1 decision win over Zaeden Crocker at 182, Zibolis figured what the eventual outcome would be.

“No, you kind of know,” Zibolis said. “You can kind of predict the matches as we go. The last time we faced them, they were missing a couple of kids in those middle classes, and we got wins from some kids who lost today, earlier in the season.

“We knew the lineup was going to be different. For us to come through, Cole Ducharme came out, that was big at 138, we were worried about that.”

Still, this was the biggest moment for North wrestling in several years, and they certainly want to enjoy it before they tackle powerful Timberlane in Wednesday’s semifinals in Plaistow.

“I’m so proud of the kids just in general,” Zibolis said. “Working through all this stuff, working through the COVID stuff, coming every day. Staying safe on the outside of school, doing it the right way so we don’t have to get shut down, things like that. It’s been good and the kids have done a great job of it, really proud of them to move on.”

Newsletter