Notre Dame, Saucon Valley on top after first day
PALMER TWP. — Ty Csencsits of Saucon Valley came into the PIAA District 11 2A wrestling tournament ranked second in The Morning Call’s wrestling rankings with a 10-0 record. That’s eight more matches than the individual ranked above him, Easton’s Isaiah Reinert, and nine more than the one below him, Nazareth’s Joe Capobianco.
This sure has been the craziest season of all time, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, but at least some wrestlers will have a chance to compete for a state title, unlike last year, when the plug was pulled on the postseason and nobody had a chance.
Csencsits, a junior, advanced to Sunday’s semifinals by pinning Palmerton’s Jeremy Mooney in the first period at 189 pounds Saturday at Palmer Township’s Charles Chrin Community Center, which means he’s still alive for one of only two berths in each weight class to advance to next weekend’s Southeast Regional at Central Dauphin East.
“It’s definitely different,” Csencsits said. “It’s just like no other [season], you know what I mean? It’s just like you’ve got to go to practice and you’ve got to wrestle hard, especially with these masks. You have to keep these masks on during practice, so you’re always prepared.”
“Different” doesn’t begin to describe the teenage wasteland that is the 2021 wrestling season in the Lehigh Valley.
Despite none of Notre Dame Green Pond’s wrestlers ever being infected, the Crusaders were limited to six dual meets and had their trip to the Powerade Tournament near Pittsburgh canceled because of an outbreak in the school that never affected anyone on the team.
“Our team’s been clean,”
coach Matt Veres said. “The kids have been doing the right things and sacrificing for the past few months to get to this point in the postseason, so hopefully we can keep it rolling.”
Notre Dame, The Morning Call’s top-ranked 2A team, came through the first day with minimal damage. All but one wrestler advanced to the semifinals.
As a result, it led in the team scoring with 66 points after the quarterfinals. Saucon Valley, with seven individuals still alive for gold medals, was in second with 54 points.
The tournament features a true second-place format in which losers of the finals must face the winners of the consolation finals if they hadn’t already met in the winners’ bracket.
Notre Dame’s Jason Sine, ranked third at 215, remained on a collision course with top seed and No. 2-ranked Nate Wickersham of Tamaqua, who pinned Gauge Hartney of Lehighton in their quarterfinal match.
Sine pinned Zachary Sherman of Mahanoy Area in the quarterfinals. He will meet Saucon Valley’s Dante Mahaffey in Sunday’s semifinals.
Mahaffey, a Colonial League rival, he knows. Wickersham, not so much.
“I know he placed at states,” Sine said, “and that’s about it.”
Not that Sine minds.
“I prefer to go into a match not knowing who the guy is. Of course it helps to see the guy wrestle, but I feel I perform on a higher level when I know how I’m going to approach the match.”
Sine describes himself as “pretty explosive” and more technically sound on top than he used to be.
“I have very heavy hips,” he said. “If a guy gets deep in on a shot, I can usually do pretty good to avoid getting scored on and possibly reverse out that score.”
Like everyone else still competing, Sine will have to go against teammates in the room only. The pandemic has forced teams to cancel cross-training with other programs in the postseason. But by now most are used to the extreme limitations this season presents.
“You kind of have to reinforce the ideology that it’s a team effort,” Sine said. “So when you’re spending every day with your team, you know you’re using the most of your resources. There is no outsourcing like when you’re practicing in another room. You’ve got to trust that your teammates are going to give you a different feel and you really have to depend on them to, you know, give you the workout that you need to sort of wrestle at a high capacity at tournaments like this.”