Parkersburg’s Braycon Hedges smiles following his pin of Huntington’s Jeff Hood in 2:15 during PHS’s 54-28 dual meet victory on Friday from the PHS Memorial Fieldhouse. (Photo by Josh Hughes)

PARKERSBURG –The Parkersburg High matmen keep on winning and setting the tone early in the 2022-23 campaign. In consecutive nights, PHS responded. With both the Big Reds and Huntington Highlanders still figuring themselves out in the beginning stages of the year, a 54-28 dual win like this is a momentum-builder for head coach Matt Littleton’s PHS grapplers. Five Big Red wins via pin made for quick work of the visitors, as 113-pounder CJ Carrodus pinned HHS’s Nate Volk in 3:25.

“It was fun. I went out there and did what I needed to do,” Carrodus said following his second victory in as many nights, having previously defeated Buckhannon Upshur’s Ian Cornette on Thursday night. “I want to get down to 106. I’m not sure if I can get there, but we’re improving as a team and doing things as a team.”

Counteracting three non-exhibition pins by Huntington were winning efforts from the following:

Braycon Hedges outlasted 144-pounder Jeff Hood in 2:15. One weight class above, Ethan Jones made even shorter work of Fletcher Miller in 44 seconds. Not counting Timothy Hudson’s 44-second exhibition pin over Milik Postlewaite, it was the fastest PHS victory of the night. Not far behind Jones was the 165 bout featuring PHS’s Parker Cole and Huntington’s Kaden Gore. Cole impressed with a 49-second pin for the win. Heavy weight Gabe Davies had an eventful dual meet, as he defeated Gus Lambert in an exhibition match lasting 4:34. Then, he dispatched of Alex Walraven in 1:15.

Winning by forfeit at 106, the visiting green and gold managed four other victories on the night. James St. Clair’s 19-5 major decision over 132-pound Jeramiah Shaffer got Huntington in the win column, and that was followed by 138-pounder Joe Riggs pinning PHS’s Jesse Showalter in 1:04. Another pair of consecutive Highlander triumphs came at 190 and 215. Max Specht defeated Adam Elder in 303, while Akeem Bivens fell to Matt Can in 47 seconds.

Still, there were plenty of bright spots for the red and white.

Landon Burnside and Simon Inboden took wins by forfeit at 120 and 126 respectively, but Inboden opened the night’s dual with a 7-4 win over Ben Barrett in an exhibition. Also collecting victories via forfeit were PHS’s Silas Wotring (157) and Brandon Davies (175). In a pair of 120-pound exhibitions, Bryan Gregory went 1-1 on the night for PHS by defeating James Cooke in 1:37 and falling to Drake Dunham in 31 seconds.

“Going back-to-back nights has been a hard way to start our season, but I thought the boys responded with a lot of the stuff we’ve been going over the last couple week,” Littleton said. Some mistakes were made, so it’s back to the drawing board. We need to get that stuff cleaned up. We lost a few tough ones tonight that I thought were winnable, so I’d like to get those cleaned up and ready to go. Just making sure those mistakes don’t happen moving forward.”

It’s a work in progress for HHS head coach Rob Archer’s bunch, as well.

“They have a quality program and a great history,” Archer said of PHS. “I like wrestling in this gym. It brings back good memories, so it’s a special place to me. For both teams, a lot of their names we didn’t know, and a lot of our names, they didn’t know. We’re just getting to know each other, and we’ll get to see each other a bunch more times. We’ll see each other at WSAZ and at the regional, which will be tight.”

Contact Josh Hughes at jhughes@newsandsentinel.com