The start of the day for the Catasauqua wrestling team was great.

The end wasn’t necessarily the best of finishes.

But despite the ups and downs, head coach Kyle Rusnock was pleased with the fact that his team got to face some quality competition over the weekend.

In the annual Zephyr Duals at Whitehall High School, Catasauqua began its Saturday with a win over Central Catholic early in the morning. And while the Rough Riders lost their next three matches, it was certainly a learning experience as they battled with 15 other teams for the team championship.

“The morning was great and fantastic when we wrestled Central [Catholic],” Rusnock said. “They had a lot of tough kids and we matched up well with them though. That gave us that victory. But then we knew we were going to have some tougher competition throughout the rest of the tournament because they put us up in the upper bracket, which we wanted.”

Catasauqua then had to deal with out-of-area foe Wyalusing, the top-seeded team in the duals tournament. After a tough loss came matches against District 11’s Blue Mountain and then EPC foe East Stroudsburg South.

That loss to East Stroudsburg South-a 48-21 shortcoming-gave the Rough Riders an eighth place finish. High Point Regional out of New Jersey went on to defeat Emmaus in the championship match, 48-21.

“They are a good team, but we wrestled them very tough,” Rusnock said. “We came out with a few upset wins, but then I think everything fell apart. We started getting injured and we got beat up pretty good.”

“I expected a back-and-forth battle, kind of like what happened,” Rusnock said of the ES South match. “They won the toss, so that kind of hurt us for a couple of matches. They gave [Ryan] Greene a forfeit and bumped up, so that was a bit of a swing.”

Injuries started to pile up in the Rough Riders’ third match of the day. Jacob Latsch wasn’t able to go in that East Stroudsburg South match. Therefore, Tyler Youssef bumped up to 182 for that final match.

Despite being short-handed, Rusnock was pleased with the effort his team put forth in all four of the Rough Riders’ matches.

“We obviously got boogered up throughout today, and that hurt us big time, too,” Rusnock said. “We had to sit out our 182-pounder and 195-pounder. Youssef is boogered up, but he went and that’s why it was a close match.”

“Ben Nosal I thought wrestled outstanding except for the end. You got to know the match situation at the time. They need the experience. It’s early in the year for us. Half of my guys play football, so we are still early on.”

Results from Wednesday’s match against Northern Lehigh, another team that competed in the Zephyr Duals, were not available at time of press. Up next is a trip to Wilson on Thursday at 7 p.m. where the Rough Riders will take on the Warriors.