'Who else would you want?:' YAIAA wrestler continues stellar season with title-clinching win
Tie match. Final bout of the night. YAIAA Division I title on the line.
Dallastown coach Dave Gable felt pretty confident.
After all, Caden Dobbins was taking the mat.
"Who else would you want it to come down to?," Gable said rhetorically with a smile. "That was a probably a pretty good place for us."
Dobbins pinned Spring Grove's Luke Smyser in 1:42 to give Dallastown a 33-27 road win over the rival Rockets Thursday. The win clinched the division title for the Wildcats — one year after the Rockets beat them by one point on the final bout in a match that eventually determined the championship.
The victory also improved Dallastown to 13-1 and kept the Wildcats ranked No. 3 in District 3 Class 3A with the team postseason starting Feb. 1.
And it continued a stellar personal season for Dobbins. The senior 152-pounder is 20-2 on the season and recently reached 100 career wins.
Afterward, Dobbins said he was comfortable in the pressure-packed moment — not that he was necessarily hoping for it.
"It feels good to be the final match and win it," he said. "But the other part of me would like to see my team demolish the other team."
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That's a typical mindset for Dobbins, according to his coach.
"The biggest thing that impresses me about Caden is his humility," Gable said. "You would never know if you came into our room that he's this good. He carries himself quietly, does his business, sets an example by his effort. But he's very humble."
You might not know Dobbins is "this good" by the way he carries himself, but York County wrestling fans have known about him for a few years.
He grew up in Dover before transferring to Dallastown before high school, but he comes from a Wildcats wrestling family. His father, Basil, competed for Gable just over two decade ago and was a state medalist as a senior.
Gable said he remembers young Caden "running around as a little kid" at youth wrestling tournaments. Dobbins remembers hearing stories about the calm and composed Gable being much more intense as a younger coach.
"But I got to know him a lot better the past few years," said Gable, who added Dobbins is close friends with his son, Brooks. "He's grown a lot as a wrestler and a person.
"He's definitely grown a lot in size."
Dobbins competed at 106 pounds his first two seasons before bumping up to 138 last year and now 152. He said the increase came from lifting weights and hitting a growth spurt.
He won 86 matches his first three seasons and qualified for states the past two years. But he's been outstanding this season. He's earned bonus points in 18 of his 20 victories.
His two losses have come scores of 1-0 and 2-1.
"I think he wrestles a lot more freely know with less nerves," Gable said. "He's not really worried about outcomes. He's just using all his talent to do well."
Spring Grove head coach Tyke Conover was fired up when the Rockets tied the match before the final bout on a win by 145-pounder Brady Baker. Still, he knew beating Dobbins for the overall victory would be a difficult task Thursday.
Conover clapped his hands respectfully after Dobbins earned the title-clinching pin.
"Against Dobbins? You live to fight another day at that point in time," Conover said. "That last match didn't dictate the match. The match was lost several bouts before that."
Gable predicted a strong individual postseason for Dobbins, who took fourth and second at the District 3 tournament the past two seasons.
The senior said he's like to earn some new medals his final season.
"I hope to place at states, make the finals and win," he said. "But still gotta lot to work to put in to get that."
Before that, Dallastown could make a run in the 16-school District 3 team tournament.
The Wildcats are ranked No. 3 behind Hempfield (9-0) and Manheim Township in Class 3A, but Gable noted that it's an "open field" with a lot of teams capable of winning the title. Defending champion Central Dauphin (4-1) is ranked fourth. Cumberland Valley (10-3) is ranked eight but lost to Dallastown by just two points. And Gettysburg (16-0) is ranked sixth but is undefeated after rampaging through YAIAA Division II once again.
Spring Grove (11-5) is ranked 12th but took Dallastown to the wire Thursday.
"The power rankings mean very little," Gable said. "I don't think there's a huge difference (between the teams). It's going to come down to the night and the matchups. We could lose to a lot of people, but maybe have a great tournament."
Both coaches were happy with how their teams wrestled Thursday. Dallastown got off to a fast start with a major victory from 160-pounder Ashton Deller and a pin from 172-pounder Isaiah Feeney, but Spring Grove took the lead with a win from Teague Conover at 189 and back-to-back pins from Logan Herbst and Michael Hershey at 215 and 285.
Dallastown ultimately won seven of the night's 13 bouts.
"Matches with Dallastown are usually tight and in a few spots we maybe could have wrestled smarter, but our kids wrestled well," Conover said. "I think the top 10 or 12 teams in District 3 are similar in nature and if you wrestle the tournament different days maybe different things would happen."
Matt Allibone is a sports reporter for GameTimePA. He can be reached at 717-881-8221, mallibone@ydr.com or on Twitter at @bad2theallibone.