FLYING CARDINALS TAKE FLIGHT
Upper Dublin Decks William Tennent 54-18
by Glenn Kaiser
Fort Washington, PA- Upper Dublin (1-0) and William Tennent (0-1) kicked-off their season with a friendly non-conference SOL dual, and the Flying Cardinals took flight as expected. Cardinal Head Coach Dave Jones has high expectations for his grapplers this season, as he has a full line-up with young talent and experienced veterans. Senior Austin Pendleton is back on the mats joining fellow senior Dan Gorman along with newcomer Joseph Sirianni, with a supporting cast of sophomore Jake Evans and junior Gus Platt and a host of seniors. This group is one of the Flying Cardinal’s best in a while as a dual team. UD finished 17-8 last season (3-2 in the SOL Liberty) and looks to earn a berth in the 2023 District One Team Championships.
The gym was full of fans and supporters for both teams, not very common over the past several years, but with the sport of wrestling growing by leaps and bounds, it was no surprise to see the UD gym rocking with some wrestling. The statewide movement to make girls wrestling a PIAA sanctioned sport has also added to the popularity of wrestling, and both UD and Tennent have numerous girls out for the team. Tennent leadman, Joe Stabilito, Jr., and Associate Head Coach Joe Stabilito, Sr., are a large part of the girls’ movement as Junior coaches around the state with the girls and Senior is our Pennsylvania USA Wrestling State Chairman with his main focus on the girls’ side. Souderton coach Chris Atkinson is another big proponent of girls wrestling locally and at the state level. Pennsylvania currently has 84 schools with girls’ teams (the PIAA will approve the girls’ sport with 100 girls’ wrestling teams).
In addition to fan support of both teams, it was observably a recognition of all the hard work of the coaches and athletes last night with many former coaches with connections to Upper Dublin, and now Tennent, in attendance to take in an abnormal Thursday night match. A long linage of former UD head coaches were in the building starting with Jim Holt, who coached Bill Marino to a state championship (Bill is currently a UD assistant), Anthony Stagliano, now the head coach at Wissahickon and myself (Dave Jones took over for me when I left for Hatboro-Horsham). Numerous former assistants were in the house as well, along with Kirk Holt, who returns to coaching as an assistant for Tennent after semi-retirement from Hatboro-Horsham. Kirk has been highly involved in the Warminster Spartans youth program prior to getting back to high school coaching. Jim Newell, former H-H assistant, is now an assistant at Tennent. I’m sure I left out some names here, but I’ll add Tom Hickey and John Gillespie as others in attendance, both with connections in the long local coaching linage at UD, Abington and Wissahickon.
Both teams have large rosters, and it is great to see Junior Varsity have 13+ matches prior to the Varsity competition, which seems to be the norm these days as evidenced by back-to-back matches (CRS/Pennridge) featuring plenty of JV wrestling, and the addition of JV tournaments and girls’ events (@ Quakertown this Saturday).
Okay, back to the wrestling…
UD racked up eight pins on the Panthers, starting at 139-pounds with Dan Gorman’s 59-second fall over Mason Pride. Austin Pendleton made it three in a row with his decking of Damian Pride at 152-pounds. Gus Platt (160) and Gavin Rockey (172) made it five straight falls and a 30-love lead for the Flying Cardinal. The pin-fest continued, starting at 189-pounds, but this time it was William Tennent posting three straight falls to make the match interesting at 30-18. Sean Hazlett (189), Viktor Purshaha (215) and Daniel Pacas Sanchez (285) recorded the pinfalls for the Panthers.
UD countered, as the match came back around to the light weights, with Jake Evans (107) and Zach Gallagher (114) posting pins to blow open the match as UD extended its lead to 42-18. Two matches were decided by decisions with UD’s Caden Cerminaro (121) and Joseph Sirianni (127) notching those wins. C.J. Ambrose finished the scoring for UD, with you guessed it, with a pinfall to close out the blowout for UD 54-18.
Tennent is off to the Franny Lutz Duals at Upper Merion this Saturday, and UD is off until 12/14/22 when the grapple Lower Moreland.
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