Gilbert captures league title

WINSTED — Gilbert capped an undefeated Berkshire League wrestling season with a Berkshire-Valley Postseason Invitational Wrestling championship Saturday afternoon at Northwestern High School.

“It’s the exclamation point of our season,” grinned Yellowjacket coach Darek Schibi, whose team was 14-3 overall in dual meets, including losses only to teams from Florida and New Jersey on a trip to Florida and Avon outside the league.

Saturday, Gilbert joined Northwestern in sending six wrestlers apiece to the finals in the combined Berkshire League/NVL tournament, with three individual winners from each team.

Nick Barber, Ben Mow and Andrey Zhovkoy were tournament champions for the Yellowjackets.

Angelo Folino, the meet’s outstanding wrestler, Josh Schwartz and Caleb Boucher did it for the Highlanders.

Oxford, Nonnewaug and Derby had two champions apiece; Terryville and Watertown had one each.

The spread of championships among the 11 competing teams (plus four JV teams) was testimony to the health of the sport, but quality depth pulled the Yellowjackets away from

the crowd, with 219 points to second-place Nonnewaug’s 174 and Northwestern’s 161.

“We have 12 varsity wrestlers and all of them finished in third place or higher,” Schibi said.

Dave Green, Nonnewaug’s veteran coach, sees the Winsted schools’ challenge to the Chiefs’ longstanding power reign as a direct result of their fouryear-old Northwest Hurricanes youth wrestling program, feeding Gilbert and Northwestern experienced wrestlers.

“We’re just pleased when our kids wrestle with the things we taught them to do,” Green said.

“It’s become black and white,” said Gilbert Athletic Director Pat Cooke, the Berkshire League’s wrestling director. “The programs with youth feeder programs are the ones that are growing. We’re a small school with 24 or 25 kids out for wrestling. That’s almost 15 percent of the student body. It’s a testament to the coaches who made the Hurricanes successful.”

Two of Gilbert’s winners Saturday testified to its success.

Nick Barber, a junior who spent two years in Wethersfield’s youth program before moving to the Hurricanes in eighth grade, said, “I learned a lot from the Hurricanes.”

Senior Andrey Zhovkoy, wrestling for just two years, proved along with many of Saturday’s other champions that sheer talent and hard work still count.

“But,” Zhovkoy smiles, “if I started in sixth grade, I would be state champion now.”

Next week, at the Class S State Tournament at Windham, that possibility becomes real.