Top wrestler from Mount Pleasant commits to Pitt
Dayton Pitzer said his mom cooked him steak, potatoes and broccoli to celebrate a big accomplishment of his last week.
It was a fitting meal for a meat- and- potatoes guy who now knows where he will wrestle in college.
Pitzer, who recently completed his junior year at Mount Pleasant High School, is one of the top wrestlers in the state. He’s a two-time WPIAL champ and a two- time PIAA champ.
He’s now a Pitt recruit, too, after relaying news of his commitment to Pitt coach Keith Gavin last Wednesday. Pitzer then made it public two days later on social media.
Pitzer said he ultimately chose Pitt over Penn State, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, the Naval Academy and West Point. Pitt was the only school in which he made an official visit. He visited June 4-6.
“I was going to visit more schools, but after seeing Pitt, I knew what I wanted and just didn’t feel the need to visit anywhere else,” said Pitzer, the WPIAL and PIAA Class 2A champion at 215 pounds his junior season.
Pitzer said Pitt was involved in his recruitment from the start, saying that they were the first school to contact him when schools were permitted to first contact class of 2022 wrestlers last June.
At Mount Pleasant, Pitzer has a career record of 85-3. He was 43-1 as a freshman and 42-2 as a junior. He missed his sophomore season with a knee injury.
Pitzer, who is 6 feet 4, 205 pounds, is arguably the centerpiece of a Pitt recruiting class that has a strong local flavor. It also includes Hempfield’s Briar Priest, Mt. Lebanon’s Mac Stout and Connellsville’s Jared Keslar. Priest won a PIAA title in 2021 and Stout is a former PIAA runner-up.
“It’s really good,” Pitzer said of the class. “I’m super excited to get to Pitt and start working with those guys. I want to accomplish my own goals, like being a national champion, and I want to do it as a team, too. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
A few of those recruits took their official visits the same days as Pitzer, who said some of the highlights included a trip to Topgolf and a cookout hosted by current Pitt wrestler Cole Matthews.
“It wasn’t just looking at buildings,” said Pitzer, who has been wrestling since second grade. “It was about being around the team. It was a lot of fun.”
Pitzer also had his picture taken wearing a Pitt singlet, something that will become commonplace in the upcoming years.
Mt. Lebanon grad on rise
When J.B. Nelson was a senior in high school, Mt. Lebanon coach Bob Palko said he had the potential to one day be a big-time recruit. One year into junior college, Nelson has Palko looking pretty smart.
Nelson, a 6-foot-6, 310pound offensive tackle, is seeing his recruitment take off after spending the past year at Lackawanna College, a junior college in Scranton. This month, Nelson has reeled in offers from Penn State and West Virginia.
A Fabulous 22 selection his senior season at Mt. Lebanon, Nelson chose to attend Lackawanna to get his academics in order and to develop his football talent.
“I want to get my degree and hopefully transfer to a D1 school,” Nelson said in February of his senior year.
Lackawanna didn’t play a fall season in 2020 due to the pandemic, but it did play in the spring. Nelson has improved in the classroom, as well, and said he holds a 2.9 GPA.
Nelson’s Twitter hashtag includes the word “never give up,” and he certainly has not.
Carney taking visits
One of the WPIAL’s top basketball players in the junior class has started to take his official visits.
It could be a busy summer for Butler guard Devin Carney, who holds more than a dozen Division I offers and took his first official visit to Rice last week. Rice, which is located in Houston and offered Carney last month, plays in Conference USA.
Also last week, Carney took an unofficial visit to Elon, which offered while he was there. Carney also has offers from Duquesne, Robert Morris, Saint Francis, Rhode Island, George Mason, Toledo, Northern Illinois, North Carolina A& T, Holy Cross, Bryant and Radford.
Carney (6 feet tall) was the third-leading scorer in the WPIAL his junior season when he averaged 29.6 points per game. He was a Fabulous 5 pick and was named first-team all-state in Class 6A. He will enter his senior season with 1,501 career points.