SOUTHERN SECTION WRESTLING: H.-W. SENDS TWO TO STATE.

Byline: Gideon Rubin Staff Writer

FOUNTAIN VALLEY - Just in case you missed one of the year's biggest Southern Section wrestling surprise stories, with any luck it will be coming to a theater near you sometime soon.

Harvard-Westlake High of Studio City's unheralded wrestling team's best season in school history is being chronicled by Gary Barios, the team's coach and filmmaker. Barios is videotaping the team's matches, practices, and even downtime to capture the experience of competitive high school wrestling for what he hopes will be a full-feature documentary film.

The Wolverines have provided some compelling subject matter.

At Saturday's Southern Section Masters Meet, Kenji Porter (215) and Jeremy Stuart (160) both won their respective quarterfinal matches to become the school's first-ever state-championship qualifiers.

The state meet will be held March 5-6 at Centennial Garden in Bakersfield.

The only other area wrestler to qualify for the state meet was Royal High of Simi Valley's Eric Blackwell.

``I'm glad he's filming it, I'm going to want to watch it some day,'' said Stuart (46-4), a senior who upset quarterfinal opponent Bobby Green (A.B. Miller of Fontana), the state's fourth-ranked wrestler, 7-5. Stuart lost to eventual champion Brian Merritt (Yucca Valley) and finished fifth.

Porter (42-4), a junior who last week became the school's first-ever Southern Section individual champion, defeated quarterfinal opponent Rob Felix (Centennial of Corona) 6-3. He took sixth place in his weight class after losing his next two matches.

Barios, a former All-American wrestler and Pacific-10 Conference champion at Arizona State, is an actor/screenwriter whose credits include an appearance in ``Somebody's Waiting,'' a Martin Donovan directed film released in 1998.

``What I really wanted to do out of it is say something about the sport that I love, and that I think is important, and also communicate the validity of the sport by taking kids that wouldn't be your stereotypical wrestlers and seeing how far they've come,'' Barios said. ``This isn't your stereotypical wrestling team.''

Nevertheless, they're one of the most successful.

--Royal flush: After losing his quarterfinal match, Blackwell (42-6) defeated Parker Bray (Palm Desert) in the fourth consolation round 6-2 to advance to the state meet.

A second-generation Royal wrestler (his father Mike was a standout on a Marmonte League champion team in the mid 1970s), Blackwell is the first wrestler to advance to the state meet since Chris Rueckert (1999 and 2000). Royal hadn't qualified for the state meet since 1992 before that.

--Close calls: The Golden League qualified 11 wrestlers to the Masters meet, but none qualified for the state meet, despite several close calls.

Highland of Palmdale's Kyle Burnett (112) and Jess Garcia (275) and Antelope Valley's Jordan Hack (189) each lost qualifying matches.

Gideon Rubin, [phone]

gideon.rubin(at)dailynews.com