Wrestling: Unbeaten Rockets cruise past Dixon, North Boone

Rockets head coach Derrick Cox was not among them. He saw plenty of things he wasn’t too pleased with after his team dispatched North Boone 60-10 and Dixon 53-15.

“We were a little sloppy,” Cox said. “We let guys hang in the match way too long. We should have pushed the issue a little bit more. I guess wrestling 15 duals in the first 2 1/2 weeks may do that to you.

“Now we’ve got a little bit of time to go back to the practice room. I wasn’t overly pleased with the effort and aggressiveness of some of our guys, but in the end, we did what we had to do.”

Rock Falls (15-0) had 90 points in the bag before it even took the mat in the form of nine forfeits received from North Boone and six more from Dixon.

As a result, many of the team’s heavy hitters didn’t take off their warmups.

There were just three matches contested against North Boone, and the Vikings won two of those. The lone win from the Rockets came from Matt Mammosser at 182 pounds, where he gained a 10-4 decision over Nathan Bodey.

Against Dixon, coming out on top were Konner Smith (120), Roberto Arellano (145), Zac Muntean (160), Lucas Newburgh (182) and Josiah Torres (285).

Smith and Torres had to sweat out their wins a bit. Smith scored the first points of a match against Dixon’s Brandon Hey with 1 minute, 35 seconds remaining, then finished it off with three back points in the closing seconds.

Torres scored a takedown to tie up the Dukes’ Josh Musgrove 4-4 with a minute to go in their 285-pound bout. Torres then scored a takedown early in overtime to pull out a 6-4 decision.

Dixon (1-14) gained its first dual victory of the season with a 42-11 decision against North Boone. The Dukes’ lone bout winner was Connor Sperling, who pinned Nathan Bodey in 5:34. Dixon received six forfeits.