Nashua South's Anthony Fernandez has control over North's Ben Haight at 132 during Tuesday night's Battle of the Bridge at North. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – They couldn’t hide their enthusiasm throughout the match.

For the Nashua High School South wrestling team, Tuesday night’s 51-30 Battle of the Bridge win over arch rival Nashua North was a big deal.

“This is huge for us,” South coach Adam Langlois said. “We lost last year, obviously, the year before was a close one and this year we wanted to come out and make some noise, and make a difference.

“To be honest, we have a couple of guys who aren’t here today (for classes), I thought we were going to lose. My guys took it to heart, they wanted to come and win.”

And they wrestled like it. The Titans got only two actual wins, by Matt Oliver who wrestled up at 120, and Trevor Rivard, in the final match at 138, both via pin. The rest of the Titan points were via forfeit, while none of South’s were.

There was another reason this was special. These two teams wrestled almost a year ago to the night, and South wasn’t even competitive because the pandemic left the program nearly bare with just a handful of wrestlers. Not this year.

“Last year was difficult for everybody,” Langlois said. “The administration, us, and the kids. This year they said they didn’t want to deal with it any more, they just wanted to wrestle. And we’ve had more fun in the room than we’ve had in 10 years.”

There wasn’t a lot of noise coming from the Titans side of the mat.

“It was a tough night,” North coach Chad Zibolis said. “Coach Langlois did a good job of bumping his lineup a little bit. We had a couple of JV kids in the lineup, as we were missing kids, too. But hey, they came out, they wrestled tough, they wrestled hard, and they were in better shape than we were.”

Zibolis said he knew his team was in trouble when South’s Kyle Vancellette began things with a first-period pin of North’s Andrew Frye at 145. South’s Connor Whitman then decisioned (4-1) Finn Mullaly at 152, and then came pins by Panthers Damien Perez at 160, Andrew Lovell at 182, and Conner Comeau at 195. It was basically over.

Perhaps the tell-tale match of the night was Colby Vancellette’s third period (:57.8) pin at 220 over North’s Toby Brown, giving the Panthers a commanding 33-6 lead. “That’s big, beating Toby Brown, a monster,” Langlois said.

South sports a top wrestler in Anthony Fernandez, who pinned North’s Ben Haight at 132. “He’s probably one of the best in the state, one of the best in the region, I think,” Langlois said.

South also got pins by Jimmy Brown at 285, John Cullerton at 126 and then Fernandez.

As disappointed as he was, Zibolis is all about the sport and was happy to see a room full of wrestlers and fans for both teams in a more competitive match than last year.

“I’d rather have that,” he said, “than what happened last year, no matter what. As long as more kids are wrestling, it’s better.”

You’d get no argument from the South side, that’s for sure.