Mayfield’s Tramontano making up for lost time

With a loud thud, Mayfield’s Marco Tramontano took Euclid’s Brandon Krivacic to the mat and pinned him.

The brunt force of the pinning combination suggested a sense of urgency from the senior 285-pounder, like he was he was agitated something was stolen from him.

Actually, something was stolen from him.

No, not from

Krivacic.

Tramontano’s junior year of wrestling was ripped away from him by a surgery to replace a torn labrum in his left shoulder.

A chiseled, 6-foot-3 physical specimen, Tramontano is widely regarded as a wrecking ball of a defensive lineman for Mayfield’s successful football program, one who earned first team Division II AllOhio honors this past fall. He will play offensive line next fall for Notre Dame College’s successful D-II football program.

Others know of him for his prowess in track and field, where he advanced to the Division I state track meet in the shot put last spring.

But wrestling — that is Tramontano’s baby, and his favorite sport.

Having that taken away from him last winter because of shoulder surgery was almost as excruciating as the surgery itself.

So as the Division I district wrestling tournament at Mentor kicks off on March 6 and fans see Tramontano on the mat brutalizing the opposition as if he is trying to make up for lost time, well he is.

“This has been my sport the last 12 years,” Tramontano said. “I’m so stoked to get back at it and to get my chance to be first in the state. I’m ready.”

Tramontano heads into the fabled “Mentor Meatgrinder” with a 41-2 record and 28 pins. He will face Nordonia’s David Howard (14-25) in his opener, with a win there placing him in the quarterfinals against the winner of Canton McKinley’s Knowledge

Smith (40-8) and Akron Ellet’s Nathaniel Lucas (16-19).

“I have to make up for my junior year,” a focused Tramontano said. “I guess I’m taking my junior year and combining it with my senior year. We’ll see how it goes.”

Rewind to the fall of 2018. Tramontano and his Mayfield football teammates were getting ready to kick off their season with him as an anchor on both the offensive and defensive line, despite only being a junior. Tramontano was coming off a sophomore wrestling season in which he went 26-10, losing at the district tournament in the consolation semifinal round, 2-1, in ultimate tiebreaker fashion to Copley’s Will Gallen.

The loss left him one victory short of qualifying for the Division I state wrestling tournament as a sophomore 285-pounder — and Tramontano was salty about that. Salty and motivated.

But in a 3-0 seasonopening win over Walsh Jesuit, Tramontano injured his left shoulder. He gutted out the rest of the season, but knew something wasn’t right.

“I tore my labrum in that game and separated my shoulder,” he said. “I popped the shoulder back in and played the rest of the season, but I needed surgery for the labrum.”

Which meant no wrestling last year.

“Awful,” he said, characterizing the experience. “I couldn’t deal with it. I’d just stay home because it was too hard to just go and

watch wrestling matches. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I missed it that much.”

Not even a trip to the state track meet, where he finished 13th in Division I with a shot put heave of 52feet, 7-inches, could quench his fire.

Working feverishly in the weight room to get back to where he was prior to the surgery, with an eye on his senior year on the gridiron and wrestling mat, Tramontano was focused more than ever.

Taking his frustration out on the football field, Tramontano led The NewsHerald area in tackles for loss (33) and sacks (14.5) this past fall, while also anchoring the offensive line as part of a Mayfield team that went 10-0 in the regular season and advanced to the second round of the Division II, Region 5 football playoffs.

That set the stage for the reclamation project he is currently undergoing on the wrestling mat.

“Two losses,” said Tramontano, ever the perfectionist, of his losses to Chardon’s Jaret Hall and Sandusky Perkins’ Sam McNulty. “I was winning in both of them.”

Yes, he has 41 wins this year. Yes, his two losses still grind his gears. That’s the competitor in him.

“He’s got such a motor,” said Mayfield wrestling coach Dwight Fritz. “He’s a big kid with a motor. You should see him in our conditioning. We’ve got 35 kids on our team and only two or three outrun him in practice. He’s not a fat-man jogger. He runs. He’s relentless in everything that he

does.”

That relentless persona is in stark contrast to the laughing, joking, sensitive side he has when not participating in sports, Fritz said with a laugh.

“The nicest kid ever,” Fritz said. “He’s just fun to be around. He’s like a 270-pound puppy.”

Put him on a football field — or on a wrestling mat, like this weekend at the Mentor District — and well, let’s just say there are better places to be than standing face-to-face with a highly motivated, driven Marco Tramontano who is still trying to make up for missing his junior year of wrestling.

Despite the injury of his junior year, Tramontano received a football scholarship from Notre Dame College — an absolute steal for the Falcons if you ask anyone who knows of Tramontano’s upside on the gridiron. He’ll major in nursing and play football for Falcons and is still entertaining the idea of possibly wrestling for the fourthranked Division II college wrestling team in the nation.

The future will take care of itself in due time. Right now, Tramontano is focused on what’s in front of him — the opportunity to advance to the state tournament, one that was ripped from him last year by shoulder surgery.

“This is the strongest I’ve ever been,” he said. “I feel like I’m better than I was before the surgery. I don’t just want to get to state, I want to place. That’s my goal. If I can take top two, that’s even better.”

Tramontano