Lehigh wrestlers bat 1.000, win fourth straight title
They didn’t win every bout they wrestled, but Lehigh University’s wrestlers went 10-for-10 at the one-day Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships Friday at the Spooky Nook Sports Complex in Manheim, Pa.
All 10 of the individuals the Mountain Hawks brought to the tournament qualified for next month’s NCAA Championships in St. Louis.
That success lifted Lehigh to its fourth straight conference championship as well following a strange and sometimes depressing dual-meet season that produced a 3-4 record.
Lehigh produced five finalists. Jaret Lane (125 pounds), Malyke Hines (133), Stroudsburg graduate Jake Jakobsen (197) and Jordan Wood (185) won gold medals. Jimmy Hoffman was the runner-up at 149.
Connor McGonagle (141) and Brian Meyer (165) finished third. Bethlehem Catholic graduate Luca Frinzi (157) was fourth. So was Jake Logan (174) after giving up a medical forfeit to Tim Fitzpatrick of American in the thirdplace match.
Dylan Ammerman finished fifth at 184 after accepting a medical forfeit over Joe Accousti of Sacred Heart.
Wood’s 6-0 decision over Army’s Bobby Heald in the finals was historic. It made him the first heavyweight EIWA in conference history to win four tournament titles and only the fifth overall in Lehigh history to accomplish the feat as he punctuated Lehigh’s team title with an exclamation point.
Being able to train uninterrupted for the longest span of the season, three weeks, was the key, according to coach Pat Santoro.
“It was everything,” he said. “I mean, we just felt that we never had more than two weeks straight of training and then we’d sit for two weeks. But the guys won all the tight matches today, they were winning third periods.
“That’s typically what we’ve done. We hadn’t done that all year. They just really wrestled well. I’m just really proud of them.”
Hynes won a 4-2 decision over Navy’s Jacob Allen. That came immediately after Lane maintained his perfect record with a 5-0 decision over Navy’s Logan Treaster to improve to 8-0.
Lane didn’t score until reversing Treaster with a little under a minute to go in the second period. He added a third-period takedown and bonus point for riding time to claim the title and put Lehigh in command in the team race over the second-place Midshipmen.
Wood became a four-time conference finalist and fourtime NCAA qualifier with a 2-0 decision over Zachary Knighton-Ward of Hofstra in the semifinals. He was so dominant that he didn’t give up any points in the tournament.
“The individual title was just a cherry on top,” Wood said. “The fact that we won four straight as a team, that was a big goal coming into Lehigh, something that Coach Pat was talking about was that we’ve got to get on top of the EIWA and get a team trophy at nationals.
“We’ve done the first part and we’re still shooting for that [NCAA] team trophy.”
To a man, the wrestlers sensed a big tournament performance would happen even after finishing with a losing record.
“We’re very confident in ourselves,” Jakobsen said. “... We know the work that we’ve been putting in.”
Furthermore, they’ve been paying attention to what’s been said.
“I think this is the fourth year in a row that Flowrestling predicted us to lose,” Jakobsen said, “and somehow we won all four.”