CARY - Cary wrestling’s short-lived absence from contention for the state dual team championships officially ended Tuesday night. With wins over Wilmington Laney and Northern Durham, Cary and second year coach Taylor Cummings advanced to the familiar territory of the 4A state quarterfinals a year after being eliminated in the only first round loss in program history.

“My sophomore year we had a really strong team and we made it to the state finals. I was disappointed last year, so it’s awesome to be on a run,” said Cary senior 160-pounder Bo Mulligan. “I knew Cary was a powerhouse for a long time before I got here, so it would be cool for this year to start back the tradition of being the powerhouse in this state.”

After a 43-28 first round victory over Laney, Cary took on Northern Durham, who advanced to the second round with a 51-26 defeat of Scotland County. Knights coach Matt Brown said competing against a storied program like Cary’s got inside the heads of his wrestlers, who fell by a final score of 37-22.

“I think we wrestled Cary’s jersey and the mystique of Cary as much we wrestled their guys,” Brown said. “I thought we wrestled hard, I just thought we could have wrestled a little better. But we have a lot of young kids coming in and I have a really good freshman class. This is invaluable, because wrestling good guys like this helps us for the [individual] regionals.”

Cary started the match with pins at 126 and 132 pounds. After Ryan Foran pinned Northern Durham’s Jabari Myles to put his team up 6-0, Alex Ynoquio added his own win by fall to give the Imps a 12-0 lead.

Northern Durham made it 12-3 when Marklin Bailey recorded an 11-4 decision over Cary’s John Blackwell at 138 pounds. Mark Mulligan then recorded a pin at 145 pounds for the Imps before the Knights’ Dominique Alford answered with an 8-5 defeat of Adam Kugler at 152 pounds.

After Alford’s victory made it 18-6 Cary, Rodney Shepard of Northern Durham dominated Cary’s Stephen Amaya for a 22-7 technical fall at 160 pounds.

With the Imps leading 18-11, Bo Mulligan wrestled up a weight class at 170 pounds, where he needed only 35 seconds to pin the Knights’ Mack Fenlon and widen the Imps’ margin to 24-11.

Northern Durham picked up its second victory of the match by technical fall at 182 when Atavion Oliver built an 18-3 lead against Cary’s Ryan Silverman to trim the lead to 24-16.

The Imps then won at 195 and 220 with an 11-7 decision by Travis Bach and a victory by injury forfeit for Corey Daniels, respectively, to extend the lead to 33-16.

Knights heavyweight Alexander Reams recorded a 2-1 victory over Trent Wooten of Cary in one of the closest matches of the evening before Northern Durham 106-pounder Josh Brown defeated the Imps’ Nick Tarvin 7-4 to pull his team to within 33-22.

Going into the second-to-last match of the evening, the Knights needed a pin to keep their hopes alive, but Cary’s Ryan Garrigues extinguished any hope for a comeback with a match-clinching 11-3 major decision over Northern’s Antonio O’Niel at 113 pounds.