Staff photo / Preston Byers Canfield head wrestling coach Craig Shaw, center, poses with members of the Cardinals wrestling program after being presented with a commemorative banner celebrating his 250th career win Wednesday.

CANFIELD — Wednesday was a special night for the Canfield wrestling program, as it honored four seniors and, following a dominant, 68-12 dual victory vs. Boardman, head coach Craig Shaw, who earned his 250th career win.

“It is cool for the seniors because everybody puts in so much time,” Shaw said. “This sport’s hard, and if they can get through four years of high school wrestling, especially with the program that we run … to see them come out on top tonight, it makes it a lot of fun and memorable for these kids. And for me too.

“This is my 15th year as a head coach – 10 at Alliance and five here now. I’ve had a lot of great teams throughout the years, a lot of great assistant coaches, so I’m just fortunate to be around good people, and it’s worked out well.”

Of the four Cardinal seniors – Cole Beers, Arius Gingerich, Tristan Miller and Jadyn Masters – three finished the night with wins. Gingerich and Miller both pinned their opponents in the first period, while Masters received a forfeit victory at 285 pounds.

In total, Canfield earned six pinfall victories, two technical fall wins and three forfeits. Boardman scored its first points of the dual with a 126-pound forfeit win for Mason Poracky, and in the next match, 132-pounder Isaiah Payne notched the only non-forfeit win of the night for the Spartans.

Trailing 7-2 to Nick Hartwig in the third period, Payne rallied down the stretch to take down and turn Hartwig to his back before getting the come-from-behind pinfall win.

“We went into this dual knowing what Canfield had,” Boardman head coach Hadi Hadi said. “Coach Shaw does a great job with his team. Congratulations to Coach Shaw on his 250th dual team win.”

Wednesday’s match marked one of the final dual meets for both teams before the postseason begins; the Ohio High School Wrestling Coaches Association (OHSWCA) regional duals begin in early February, and just over a month away, the individual sectional tournaments will begin.

“We are young overall, lost a senior, Antonio Catullo, to a season-ending injury, but our kids have heart, they have a desire to improve,” Hadi said. “So we’ll continue to improve as much as we can moving into the postseason and our league tournament.”

Both Boardman and Canfield will be at the same weekend tournaments the next two weeks; this coming weekend, they will be at Green to take part in the Bulldog Brawl tournament, and next weekend, they will be attending the annual Eastern Ohio Wrestling League (EOWL) meet at Austintown Fitch.

“[We’re looking for] continued progression of doing the moves we’re doing in the room and obviously, matches,” Shaw said. “We’re trying to gear up – we have EOWL next weekend, which is important, but the week after that, we have team state regionals. … If we win that, we have a chance to go to team state, so we’re going to put a lot of focus on that and see what happens.

“These are all just pebbles along the way. Just one at a time – all those analogies. That’s all they are. They’re training moments for us.”