ALTOONA Coming into Saturday’s action in the 2013 District 6 AAA wrestling championships, Central Mountain was perched in second place in the team standings with nine wrestlers still alive for a possible gold medal.

Although the Wildcats were still in second place entering Saturday night’s championship and consi final bouts, they took some serious hits as they went 4-for-9 in the semis.

While all that was going on, Mifflin County was making the most of their day’s activities as the Huskies went 6-for-11 in semifinal action to open a 13.5 point lead over the ‘Cats.

“We had our work cut out for us going into tonight’s (Saturday’s) action,” said Central Mountain head coach Doug Buckwalter. “We hit a couple of those first four seeds and we were the fourth seed. I thought we wrestled pretty hard and kept the matches close in some cases, but we weren’t able to pull them out and that is what we are going to have to do next weekend in order to make the trip to Hershey.”

When all of the day’s action was finished, Central Mountain finished second in the team race and claimed two titlists.

Winning individual titles for the Wildcats were Chad Reese at 152 and Gavin Caprio 160.

Coming up a win short of claiming a gold medal were Blaze Buckwalter (182) and Cameron Porter (220).

Add to that list of four finalists were six other placewinners who finished either third or fourth, and you have a contingent of 10 Wildcat wrestlers making the return trip to the Altoona Field House for the Northwest Class AAA regional tournament next Friday and Saturday.

“Having 10 coming back next week gives us a good group to work with,” said Buckwalter. “We are looking for a good week of practice to get better in some areas.”

Mifflin County having the tournament it did didn’t surprise Buckwalter in the least.

“They are definitely solid down below and they have some nice guys coming back for the future who will help them,” Buckwalter said. “They picked up a lot of bonus points which has helped them a lot but this is what it is about. You have to keep competing, stay with them and we were hoping to close the gap a little by having a good round to even close the gap on them.”