WINCHESTER, VA – The Johns Hopkins wrestling team had 10 individuals place in the top eight (of 16 total entries), including graduate student Chris Roybal, who placed second, and the Blue Jays totaled 106 points to place fourth at the 11-team Shenandoah Invitational on Saturday.
 
Messiah, with 33 individuals entered, totaled 204.5 points to win the team title, while Wilkes (35 entries / 169 points), Elizabethtown (22 / 152), Johns Hopkins and Shenandoah (19 / 104) rounded out the top five in the team scoring.
 
Roybal drew the number two seed and went 3-1 on the day to earn his runner-up finish at 165 pounds.  He scored wins by fall (2:01), decision (11-5) and major decision (17-5) before falling to Messiah's Keegan Demarest, 5-1, in the title bout.
 
Roybal was one of three Blue Jays who placed in the top seven at 165 as freshman Noah O'Connor went 4-2 to place sixth and junior Nicholas Hwang went 2-2 to place seventh.  All four of O'Connor's wins earned bonus points as he collected one pin, two technical falls and one major decision, while Hwang grabbed a win by fall and a major decision.
 
Junior Jacob Pomykata grabbed a third-place finish at 285 with his only loss coming in the semifinals to the eventual champion.  Pomykata won all three of his bouts by fall, including a 49-second pin of Southern Virginia's Porter Trapp in the third-place match.
 
Freshman Duncan Stadler (125), sophomore Freddy Pimental (157) and junior Connor Powell (174) all went 4-1 on the day to earn fifth-place finishes.  All eight of Stadler and Pimental's combined wins earned bonus points for Johns Hopkins with Stadler collecting a pin, a technical fall and a two major decisions, while three of Pimental's four wins came by fall and he added a technical fall as well.  All three of Pimental's pins came in the first period.
 
Powell drew the eventual runner-up in his first bout and was bumped to the consolation bracket, but he won four straight matches, including one by fall and one by major decision, to earn his fifth-place showing.
 
A trio of freshmen closed out Hopkins' place-winners on the day with Eric Gendlin (157) placing sixth and classmates Andrew Mahony (133) and Giorgio Difalco (141) collecting eighth-place showings.  Gendlin went 3-2 on the day, while Mahony and Difalco both went 4-2; Mahony and Difalco were both unable to wrestle in the seventh-place match as they had reached the NCAA-mandated six-match limit in a single day.