Abduli Gilmore’s dominant season reached new heights on Saturday.

The Mahar Regional sophomore showed his mettle against the best in the Commonwealth, capturing the state title at 113 pounds during the MIAA Division 3 Wrestling Championships at Wakefield Memorial High School.

Gilmore, who won the Central Mass. Division 3 title a week earlier, captured his first career state title. He will look to continue the championship grind next week at the MIAA All-State Championships, set for Friday and Saturday in Reading.

“We talked about just trying not to get ahead of ourselves,” offered Mahar coach John Speek of Gilmore. “He just really had a workman’s mentality about it. He’s been tough since his seventh grade year. I can’t say I came to a revelation this year, I’ve just always known [winning a state title] within his reach. To win a state title, things have to go really well for you, even if you’re as good as ’Duli.”

After winning both of his matches on Friday, beating Mohawk Trail’s Landon Purington and Tewksbury’s Angelo Desisto, Gilmore, seeded fourth in the 113-pound bracket, took down top-seeded Colin Kinne of Monument Mountain in Saturday’s semifinal round. Gilmore stormed to a 5-0 lead after one period, ultimately capturing a convincing 8-2 decision to earn a spot in the state final.

“In our training, we talk about disrupting the base, take multiple shots and that’s what he was doing the whole first periods – taking shots, being aggressive,” Speek said of Gilmore.

Matched against second-seeded Michael Thomas of Melrose High School, Gilmore set the tone early with a first-round takedown and a 2-0 lead.

He added another takedown in the second period for a 4-0 lead, and held off a third-round Thomas escape to secure a 4-1 decision and the state championship.

“He was so excited when he came off the mat,” Speek said. “Once he got those guys down, he kind of smothered them in the second and third periods [on Saturday]. He was able to maintain control.”

Gilmore’s performance guided Mahar to a 31st-place finish in the team standings with 24 points. The Senators were the top local team in the field, as Mohawk Trail took 34th with 21 points.

The Warriors received quite a performance from Will VanVleet at 220 pounds to get those points. After dropping his first match on Friday, VanVleet got rolling, ripping off four consecutive victories to earn a spot in the third-place match on Saturday. He was pinned by Patrick Deslaurier of Ashland and settled for fourth place, but a 4-2 weekend was quite the feather in VanVleet’s cap.

He picked up four wins (all via pinfall) over Bristol-Plymouth’s James Mcdonough, Middleborough’s Tristan Sybertz, Norwood’s TJ Wyman and Tewksbury’s Manuel Mengata.

Mohawk trail teammate Landon Purington went 1-2 over the weekend, earning a win over Norton’s Kate Connell at 113 pounds.

Frontier finished 45th as a team with nine points, while Athol was 42nd with 12 points. Aiden Kirwan won two matches on Saturday to finish sixth at 160 pounds. Kirwan defeated Duxbury’s Cole Slocum and Melrose’s Otto Albanese in the consolation bracket to get into the fifth-place match.

Gilmore will pace the local contingent at the All-State meet, where Speek said he expects the sophomore to continue battling.

“He’s on a roll right now so I don’t want to get in the way too much,” Speek said. “When I talk to the whole team, we say how we’re going to get every point in every period of every match. The score doesn’t matter, where we are in the brackets doesn’t matter…. go after every single point. And he really executed that this weekend.”

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