Alex Frazier's weekly notebook covers a lot of territory - everything from the PIAA's decision to make teams travel long distances on school nights to highlights of district duals.
By Alex Frazier
Question for the PIAA – Why does the PIAA make a team travel two and a half hours on a school night and start a match at 7 p.m.? The Council Rock North wrestling team left school at 1:45 Monday to make it to Big Spring High School in Newville in time for weigh-ins.
You figure about an hour and a half for a match, another half hour to get dressed and be ready to leave, and the kids get back on the road around 9. A two and a half hour bus ride gets them back to school at 11:30 and then they have to get a ride home.
So maybe they are in bed at midnight and then have to get up at 6 a.m. to go back to school.
Is this kind of schedule in the best interest of the student?
To make matters even worse, the only students who got home by 11:30 were those whose parents drove. Those who took the bus didn’t make it home until nearly 3 a.m. because the bus broke down on the turnpike and they had to await a replacement.
Obviously, that is the rare exception rather than the rule. But even getting home at 11:30, in my estimation, is too late.
In cases where there are exceptional distances between schools, why not start the match at 5 or 5:30? It may be somewhat of a hardship on the parents, but this is supposed to be about the kids. So maybe they have to take off work little early. Better that than kids going into school groggy the next day.
Another solution would be to wrestle the match at a neutral site equidistant between the schools.
State Duals – Norristown advanced to the first round of the PIAA Team Championship Tournament Monday by virtue of a 39-35 win over ManheimTownship in the preliminary round.
Council Rock North wasn’t as fortunate, as the Indians fell to Big Spring, 42-30.
As usual, Norristown had to bump wrestlers around to fill holes and get the right matchups.
Mike Springer, who has been wrestling 138 moved up to 152 where he pinned Trey Recher in 3:23. Joe Rowland, who had been wrestling 145 all season and was 6-21 entering the match, bumped to 160 and defeated Manheim’s Alex Zug, 3-2.
The Eagles then sewed up the victory with five consecutive wins. Shane Springer (170), Tyler Letrinko (182) and Larry Gordon (220), who was wrestling with a bum ankle, all turned in pins, while heavyweight Rasheed Lusane collected a forfeit.
Zach Fuentes (113) decisioned Matt Grossmann, 8-4, to clinch the match as the Eagles’ last three wrestlers were pinned.
• The Indians knew they were going to have a tough match against the District Three third place team. Big Spring had handled Rock North 53-19 back on Dec. 10.
While Rock fell short once again, it was definitely a competitive match this time.
“We actually had an outside chance,” said coach Tom Vivacqua. “We were close, but not close enough.”
The contest started at 152 and Vivacqua knew his team had to win one of the first two matches. After Chris Davis lost a close 6-5 decision at 152, Ed Mauceri went into overtime only to lose 9-4 in sudden victory.
The Indians lost an important matchup when Big Spring bumped its good 132 pounder away from John Dutrow. While Dutrow pinned Brad Lay in 1:35, Dustin Rook got that back with a fall over Tyler Kelly at 138.
Matt O’Neill (170), Tyler Callender (220) and Mike Jeronis (106) collected pins for the Indians.
“It’s tremendous how much our team got better from pushing each other hard,” said Dutrow. “We have a great group of kids in that room pushing.”
State Record – Kudos to Norristown’s Shane Springer, who broke the state career record for pins last Saturday against Owen J. Roberts. The former record of 127 from 2008 was held by Brandywine Heights’ Matt Yocco.
Coach Mark Harner didn’t make it any easier for him as he bumped Springer from 170 to 195. It didn’t faze Springer, who executed the prettiest front head lock-back trip to deck the Wildcats’ Nick DeAngelo in 51 seconds.
Springer previously said that breaking the state record wasn’t one of his primary goals. He wants to win states and getting the pin record is just a milestone along the road to the top of the podium.
The 100 Club –Congratulations are also in order this week for two new members, one a wrestler and one a coach.
• Wissahickon’s Brennen Weiss joined the elite company Friday in the resumption of the Pottsgrove Classic, which had been shortened previously because of foul weather.
Coming into the day he had 98 victories and was confident he would win his 100th.
His 99th came against Avon Grove’s Tim Douglas, whom he decisioned 9-4. The 100th was Pottsgrove’s Riley Michaels who fell 7-2.
“I was excited,” he said. “It was something I knew I would be able to accomplish going into the season. It wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, but it was definitely something in the back of my mind that I was holding onto as a goal.
“I just had to keep my composure and warm-up and wrestle as I do any other match.”
Weiss is particularly proud of his accomplishment because he is one of a small elite number that have won 100 matches at Wissahickon.
“I’m pretty proud to achieve that,” he said, “but I don’t see this as the climax of my career. I see qualifying and getting on the podium at the state tournament as my climax.”
Weiss went on to win two more against North Penn’s Riley McFadden (9-2) and Conestoga’s Logan Kerin (5-2), who, ironically, is ranked third on the D-1 website, while Weiss remains unranked.
Another irony is that both Pottsgrove coaches have Wissahickon connections. Jeff Madden was a longtime head coach that put the Trojans on the wrestling map, and previous head coach Jim Swiggard coached Weiss before he left for Pottsgrove.
Weiss’ 4-0 day also helped the Trojans win the team title, their first of the season. It came down to the last match of the day, which heavyweight Kevin Yannes won.
“On the way up our bus had some problems and we didn’t get there until 4:30 and weigh-ins were at 3:00,” said Weiss. “It was tough in the beginning, but it was a nice way to end the night.”
• Norristown coach Mark Harner won his 100th coaching match last Friday at district duals with a 37-31 win over Council Rock North.
Harner, a 1978 graduate of Norristown, is in his eighth year as head coach of the Eagles. His record for the first four years was 45-46.
“We had some pretty lean years,” he said. “I knew when I came in we were going to get worse.”
The last four have been significantly better at 57-11 for a grand total of 102-57.
It’s taken Harner a bit longer than other coaches because of his coaching philosophy. He believes it’s more important for the kids to get tough competition so he tends to enter a lot more individual tournaments. For the past few years his team has only wrestled six dual meets a year—all in the league.
This season, for example, the Eagles are 6-0 in the league and 10-1 overall. Five of those 11 matches are district duals; the other six are SOL matches.
Other teams are wrestling up to 20 dual meets a season.
“We chose the round-robin style tournaments because you get matches,” said Harner. “We want to challenge these guys.”
Before taking over the varsity, Harner was the head youth coach for 20 years.
When his brother Steve left Norristown, there was apparently not much interest in the varsity job.
“I decided I’d put my name in,” said Harner.
The transition wasn’t easy. As Harner said, “You can beat youth kids up. They don’t get tired. They don’t get hurt.”
But he soon learned that’s not the case with high school kids.
“I remember my first week of high school I had five guys hurt,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to motivate at the high school level. You can make a youth kid win by making him work real hard. In high school you have to find a way to make them want it, to make them share your goals. It’s not easy.”
Harner also has other roadblocks to overcome. He took a pay cut so that he could hire more coaches. Norristown had allocated just three coaches for the entire program.
And he often plays parent to many of his wrestlers.
“You have to be more than a coach at Norristown,” he said. “We’ve had a number of kids we haven’t seen the parents of in four years, never.”
In his eight years at the helm, Harner’s teams have won four SOL conference championships, three sectional championships and a district title.
District Duals Notes
Class act – You wouldn’t expect anything less from Brad Silimperi and Council Rock South.
One of the starred dates on the Council Rock South schedule every year is the District One Duals. The Golden Hawks were seeded eighth in this year’s tournament and defeated No. 24 Interboro 48-26 in the first round, advancing to face No. 9 Central Bucks South in the second round. A 35-28 victory meant the Hawks would face against No. 1 seed Owen J. Roberts in the quarterfinals.
But that never came to pass.
The morning before the match, one of South’s wrestlers came to Silimperi and told him about a skin rash. He was quarantined from practice that day and told to see a dermatologist. The next morning he told his coach that he wouldn’t get results for a couple of days. Silimperi then did a team skin check and discovered that three or four other wrestlers were suspect.
“You can’t confirm that the guys are contagious unless you do a culture which takes a couple of days,” said Silimperi.
He has enough experience to know the consequences and rather than risk a larger outbreak, he withdrew his team.
“It’s part of the integrity of he sport to do what’s best for all the teams at district duals,” said Silimperi. “We didn’t want to put them at risk. It was hard because this is what we gauge our success on. All our regular season dual meets are practice for the post-season, and that means district duals and state duals. To not have the opportunity to do that is tough.”
The South wrestling room was closed down on Monday and Tuesday and with the exception of a few kids, practice resumed as usual on Wednesday.
Ironically, two weeks ago, Silimperi was complimenting his wrestlers for one of the best years for skin issues.
Always the optimist, Silimperi took a positive spin on an otherwise devastating turn of events for his team.
“The good news is that we have two weeks until individual post-season,” he said. It’s going to keep our kids fresh. Sometimes when you have to take a forced break, sometimes that’s good. We’ve been out of the wrestling room doing cross-fit stuff and working hard. When they’re ready to go in the room, they’re going to be fit, they’re going to be fresh and excited.”
The Hawks have off until the Section One Tournament on Feb 18 at Neshaminy.
Down but not out –Norristown’s Rasheed Lusane seems to wrestle his best when he’s behind. Two cases in point: In last Friday’s quarterfinal against Council Rock North, Lusane trailed Rock’s Tyler Callender, who bumped up from 220, 6-5 with seconds remaining. When Callender made a mistake by getting high, Lusane rolled him and won the bout 7-6.
Wrestling one of the Indians’ tougher kids didn’t faze him when he discovered that Callender would be his opponent.
“I don’t get caught up in names,” he said. “I go out and wrestle like any other match.”
And point two: In the finals against Owen J. Roberts, Lusane found himself in another familiar situation. He trailed the Wildcats’ Brad Trago 3-1 heading into the second period. He chose bottom (his favorite position) and rolled Trago to his back for a fall at 3:41.
“I love bottom. I counter off people’s mistakes,” said Lusane. “It works for me.”
Lusane wrestled just two matches his freshman year before a hairline fracture sidetracked the rest of his season. He also took off his sophomore year.
He came back this year weighing 196 and had to put on weight to wrestle heavyweight.
SOL Top 5
1. Norristown
2. Council Rock North
3. Council Rock South
4. Central Bucks South
5. Pennsbury
Top Guns
106—Scott Parker, Pennridge
113— Billy Rappo, Council Rock South
120—Kolton Veit, Souderton
126—Josh DiSanto, Pennsbury
132—John Dutrow, Council Rock North
138—Mike Springer, Norristown
145—Justin Staudenmayer, Plymouth Whitemarsh
152—Seth Ehlo, Central Bucks West
160—Brett Harner, Norristown
170—Shane Springer, Norristown
182—Tyler Letrinko, Norristown
195—PJ Steinmetz, Council Rock South
220—Tim Riley, Council Rock South
285—Andrew Van Buskirk, William Tennent
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