Panther Creek held a slim lead on Cary going into the final bout of the regular season's final match Feb. 2, but each team needed their wrestler to win to ensure victory.

Anthony Mejia defeated Cary's Adam Kugler 9-4, which gave Panther Creek much more than just the conference championship and a 31-25 win.

It put the Catamounts in the history books as the first team to win at Cary in the regular season since 1982, the first conference opponent to defeat the Imps since 1990 and the team that shut out Cary from the conference title for the first time since 1983.

Cary's home regular-season win streak was snapped at 409 matches. It was also the third loss of the regular season, equaling the number of regular-season losses from the previous 30 years combined.

"I really don't know what to say. I'm beside myself," Panther Creek coach Jon Armfield said afterward. "If we were going to do it, this was the year to do it."

If Kugler had won that 145-pound match, he would have either given Cary the win outright or tied the final score. And because of the tiebreaking criteria that would have been used - most total combined pins and forfeits - the match would've swung in Cary's direction with a 28-all final score.

The day's hero, Mejia, nearly quit the sport the year before. But he returned to the mat, and because of it, was the hero in the match that made wrestling history.

"He's had some ups and downs with wrestling," Armfield said after the match. "If he had never come back, he would've never had that glory and he has that glory now, which he'll carry with him the rest of his life."

Panther Creek's supporters lingered to celebrate the historic win that earned them their first conference title, but also broke three streaks that were older than any wrestler on either side.