Everyone knows scissors beats paper. If that's the case, the Boyertown wrestling team was wielding a ribbon-cutting ceremony-sized pair Thursday night.
Spring-Ford boasts six wrestlers who have surpassed 20 wins already this season.
Yet the only numbers the Bears seemed interested in were the numbers at the end of each bout's three periods (or more in one crucial case). And the zero that remains next to their record.
Four of those six Ram wrestlers were unable to add to that total on a night that the reigning PAC-10 and District 1-AAA champions left little doubt, as Boyertown rolled to a 43-11 win over Spring-Ford.
"We don't let any record dictate how we're going to wrestle, you just have to go out there and wrestle and that's what we did tonight,' sophomore David Campbell said.
Boyertown again won the battle of unbeatens to move to 6-0 in the Pioneer Athletic Conference and 12-0 overall ahead of next week's District 1-AAA duals.
Heavyweight Tommy Killoran kicked things off by chopping down 20-win opponent, Zach Dorsey, and Jakob Campbell (who now boasts a 21-5 record on his own) followed suit at 106 with a 4-0 decision of freshman Brandon Meredith.
Though David Campbell didn't take down a 20-win opponent, his pivotal 4-3 win over Jimmy Frank at 113 with a final-second takedown after being dead-to-rights in a cradle early in the third left little doubt it was - like so many matches in recent times - the Bears' night.
"As a team we work really hard together and the coaches are always pushing us to a higher level and that gets us to win those close matches,' he said. "We want to be the best team and outwork everyone and prove to everyone that we're one of the top teams in the state of Pennsylvania.'
There was no bigger win than Garrett Mauger's thrilling 9-8 tiebreaker win over returning PIAA qualifier Ryan Hayes at 120, which gave the Bears a 12-0 lead. By the time Hunter Vogels handed the Rams' Nick Beauchamp (who entered 21-2) a 6-1 defeat, it was 25-3 and an all-too-similar situation to last year when both teams entered unbeaten and the Bears convincingly won 40-13.
Any rumors of a closer match this time, considering the graduation of Jordan Wertz and Eddie Kriczky as well as the absence of Jordan Wood (who came out for introductions but is yet to make his season debut), were misguided.
"The coaches jam pack our schedule with the top competition and that makes us better as a team and gets our minds ready to battle against any team they put us up against,' David Campbell said.
The individual win totals can deceive - for instance Mauger's 12-6 record entering Thursday - considering Boyertown's gauntlet of a schedule that has already featured the Brian Bealer Memorial Duals and King of the Mountain and Beast of the East tournaments, not to mention this weekend's Escape the Rock tournament.
So with that preparation in place, battle-tested Boyertown doesn't need to be concerned with paper.
"I feel like a lot of pressure is laid off because our coaches tell us ' on paper' doesn't mean anything,' Vogels said. "They train us to work through that and not worry about what people say. You want to be the first team to actually knock off a team like that and show them a high level of competition.
"It is a big win, it's very big, but we just want to work through it and take each match one at a time.'
If the Bears' form continues, those ribbon-cutting ceremony-sized pair of scissors might end up being the same ones they use for the coronation upon claiming PAC-10 and District 1-AAA Duals title in a couple weeks.
