McCoy wrestling house has silver lining

Tri-State Sports & News Service

HERSHEY, Pa. — Bishop McCoy might not be the best wrestler in the state, but he is the best in hishouse. Grudgingly. “Well, he placed higher than me, he placed second and he’s better than me,” South Side Beaver coach, and Bishop’s father Bear McCoy,said.

“I stopped wrestling about halfway through this year because he was beating me up. He wrestles similar to how I wrestled and it’s just being taken over by theyoung.”

Bear’s best finish in the PIAA wrestling finals was fourth while Bishop ended his career at South Side Beaver in the 285-pound championship match against Tri-Valley’s Danny Scheib where he settled for second place after a 3-2 loss.

He also has a career record of 124-33 and had 16 more wins than his father did.

“I finished fifth last year and my goal was to, at least, finish higher than he did,” Bishopsaid. “He had 108 career wins and when I got 109, I just kept saying ‘109’ aroundhim for a week.”

That friendly one-upmanship will end now that Bishop is looking at colleges. His plan at this point is to wrestle at Pitt-Johnstown, but Bear will miss beinghis son’s mentor.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Bear said. “We butt heads a lot, but he’s a good kid.”

Neckwear optional

With all the attention on Jefferson-Morgan senior Gavin Teasdale and his quest to become the 13th wrestler to win four state titles — and make the Rockets the only program with two — it was easy to miss that little strip of cloth in the middle of the mat when hewalked off.

Jefferson-Morgan coach Mike Lesko went with tradition and announced his retirement from coaching the old-fashioned way. He left his tie on the mat.

“We started kicking it around and we were talking about what I was going to do when he won four and he said, ‘Well, we’ve got to win,’ and he did,” Lesko said. “I didn’t want to take my tie off and show him up. I almost forgot in the moment and then I couldn’t get it off.”

And he almost forgot about it.

“It was a fun little thing because I knew that, if he does win, I’ve got to do this,” Lesko said. “I’ll miss that, going to tournaments and players playing tricks on coaches and stuff like that. You have a good rapport with some of them coaches and you’re going to missthem.” up in classification, he might have an advantage. The top four finishers in thePIAA tournament graduated, leaving a hole he could fill.

“It’sdefinitely a different world,” DeLuca said. “They’re definitely a lot bigger and there are things I need to do that I need to do abetter job of doing.”

Fresh faces