By Lou Ponsi | Correspondent / Orange County Register

UPDATED: February 11, 2023 at 8:38 p.m.

BREA — El Dorado’s Isaiah Quintero barely broke a sweat during the CIF Southern Section Northern Division Individual Championships, which concluded Saturday at Brea Olinda High School.

Quintero pinned all five of his opponents in the two-day tournament, including four in the first period, to win the 120-pound championship and come away with Lower Weight MVP honors.

2 of 8

Will Cox, of Yorba Linda High, top, puts a move on his opponent Andy Perez, of Cypress High School, bottom, during CIF Southern Section Northern division Boys Wrestling Individual Championship Saturday February 11, 2023 in Brea.(Photo by Greg ,Andersen, Contributing Photographer)

The Purdue commit duplicated his performance at last year’s Northern Division finals, when he took home the Lower Weight MVP award and won the 106-pound championship.

“Every tournament is different,” Quintero said. “It definitely feels great, getting it for me, but also for me team and my coaches.”

Quintero, a junior, went on to win the state championship at that weight last season and feels he is peaking at the right time and ready to make a run at another state championship, this time at 120, one of the toughest weight classes in the state.

“Peaking in the postseason has been my goal all year,” he said. “Just this month of February, I’m just getting dialed in. Physically and mentally.”

The video player is currently playing an ad.

The top five placers from each weight division qualify for the CIF-SS Masters Meet, which takes place Feb. 17 at Palm Springs High School. The CIF State meet is in Bakersfield on Feb. 23-25.

Etiwanda won the team competition with 195.5 points.

Seven Orange County teams finished among the top 12, including a tight battle for second between Cypress and Yorba Linda.

Centurion and Mustang wrestlers went head-to-head in the 152 and 160 championship matches, making the fight for second that much more compelling

Cypress held a nine-point lead heading into the championship round and Tyler Thienngern pretty much solidified a second-place finish for the Centurions by coming away with a first-period pin against Yorba Linda’s Wyatt Wheeler in the 152 final.

Will Cox came back for the Mustangs with an 11-4 victory in the 160 final, but the Centurions wound up finishing second with 158 points, nine points ahead of the Mustangs, who took third.

“That kind of made the difference,” Cypress coach Jon Lundberg of Thiennegern’s pin. “If we would have lost both of those, we probably would have taken third.”

Villa Park finished fifth with 131 points and Sonora was sixth with 127.5.

Western, El Dorado and Esperanza were ninth, 11th and 12th, respectively.

The Spartans crowned two individual champions.

Roy Haroun pinned Valencia’s Farid Sawaya in the first period to win the 170 championship for Villa Park, and the Spartans’ Kevin Cardenas defeated Damien’s Nicholas Salabaj 5-4 in the 220 final.

In a battle between two Orange County heavyweights, Valencia’s Dib Sawaya won 2-1 over Sonora’s Emiliano Gonzalez.

Rob Herrera of Sonora, Quintero’s cousin, won the 113 championship with a first-period pin against Alex Morales of South Torrance.