South Dade’s Balmeceda, Mater Lakes’ Neifeld are Dade Wrestling Coaches of the Year
The South Dade boys’ wrestling dynasty under Victor Balmeceda has been virtually unmatched for more than a decade now and even the Buccaneers found ways to reach new heights this year en route to yet another state title.
Meanwhile, the girls’ wrestling program at Mater Lakes under Brandon Neifeld is slowly starting to make a name for itself at the state level — and his boys team came close to winning a state title of its own.
As such, Balmeceda and Neifeld are the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade Wrestling Coaches of the Year.
For Balmeceda, this is South Dade’s 11th consecutive IBT state championship dating back to 2014 and 15th overall under his tenure.
And the competition wasn’t even close this year. South Dade won the Class 3A title with 274.5 points — the highest score South Dade has produced at state in school history and 155 more than runner-up Kissimmee Osceola.
Just how dominant were the Buccaneers? Six of the 14 individual state champions in 3A were from South Dade: Bryan Morales (106), Elvis Solis Jr. (138), Gavin Balmeceda (165), Kevin Olavarria (175), Christopher Sanchez (190) and Sawyer Bartelt (215). The six individual state champions at one meet matches the school record set in 2017.
Another four finished runner-up in their weight class: Luis Acevedo (120), Nathaniel Williams (126), Tyree Graham (144) and Joshua Aviles (150).
As for Neifeld, his small-but-mighty girls team finished fifth at state with a team score of 53 points. Mater Lakes only has six wrestlers on its girls team, but five of them made it to state and three produced top-five finishes.
Abigail Gonzalez was runner-up in the 105-pound weight class, Alena Rik finished third in the 155-pound category and Sofia Ferran came in fifth in the 110 pound class. Mia Comesana (100 pounds) and Arianna Ruiz (125 pounds) also made it to state.
Meanwhile, the Mater Lakes boys finished runner-up in Class 1A, falling just four-and-a-half points shy of Somerset Academy for the team title.
All nine Mater Lakes boys who reached state finished in the top eight of their respective weight class with Kalias Nazario (157 pounds), Myles Sadeek (175 pounds) and Damian Soto (215 pounds) finishing as runners-up.