Desisto, Callahan win titles
Tewksbury finishes second as a team
WAKEFIELD >> Nick Desisto may be a teen of few words, so he let his competitive style do all of the talking.
On Saturday afternoon, the No. 2 seed defeated top-seeded Kevin Ribeiro, 12-7, to capture the 106-pound division during the two-day Division 3 state championship at Wakefield High School.
Last year, when Desisto was in the middle school as an eighthgrader, the two met in the state championship meet, with Ribeiro coming away with the win. Then a junior, Ribeiro went on to the state final and was defeated. This year he was the Division 3 Central Mass. and the State Vocational champion and had just four losses.
Desisto had leads of 6-2 after the first and 10-3 after the second. In the three periods, he had five takedowns and his aggressiveness from start to finish was too much for his opponent.
“(Ribeiro) is a strong, physical kid. This year’s Nick’s body is a little bit different but last year the kid was physically stronger than Nick,” said Tewksbury head coach Steve Kasprzak. “I told Nick that he was slicker than him, so the game plan was to be faster and slicker and avoid those muscle situations and just out-finesse him. He totally out-finessed him. He could have taken (Ribeiro) down like twenty times.”
Desisto went 4-0 in the tournament, winning previous matches by scores of 2-0, 2-0 and 4-3. The championship match improved his record to 32-4 and he also made some program history with it.
“It feels great. I’m the second freshman to win a state title in the history of the school,” he said.
Senior Jack Callahan was the second Redmen wrestler to come away with a state title. He defended last year’s title by pin
ning Mount Everett’s Tyler Candelari at the 1:45 mark to improve to 46-3.
“This whole day I have been battling with the nerves. Most of the day it was hard to stay calm. I think it was just the pressure of keeping that state title. It hasn’t been easy but it’s definitely been one of my driving factors, to get better (and to win again),” said Callahan.
In his two-year run, Callahan didn’t give up a point in any of matches. His first three wins on the day were all by the same 2-0 scores.
“It’s less about defense and more about me trying to work my offense more,” said Callahan. “And not giving (my opponents) a chance to score any points. I definitely do work on a lot of my defense in (the practice room).”
At 195 pounds, junior Paxton Green was pinned by Gloucester’s Michael Toppan at the 3:25 mark. Junior Hunter Johnson took third place in the 145-pound class, senior Jack Donovan was fourth in 138, Angelo Desisto was fifth in the 113-pound class and sophomore Manny Mengata was fifth in the 220-pound division.
Tewksbury, which won the Division 3 North sectional title last week finishing ahead of Melrose, finished second in the team standings behind the Red Raiders, who got their revenge, which included placing all 10 wrestlers in the top eight of their respective weight classes.
“Obviously we didn’t come here saying, ‘let’s take second place.’ But you know what? Melrose wrestled like state champions and that’s why they are state champions. They outwrestled us a bit this weekend so my hats are off to them,” said Kasprzak. “I liked the way our kids finished. We dug ourselves into a hole today and we didn’t quit. We finished this tournament. Last week we finished the sectionals losing a bunch of matches in a row and today we won a bunch in a row. It’s a little bit of a different feeling and I’m much happier with how we finished today than I was last week.”
Wilmington High senior Julien Cella finished fifth in the 145-pound class. North Middlesex Regional had two place-finishers as Noah Lake placed fourth at 120 pounds and Matthew Piper finished in sixth place at 285 pounds.
The top six in each weight class advance to next weekend’s All-state Meet at Reading High School.