February 21, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

GA second, CHA eighth at PA Wrestling Champs
by TOM UTESCHER

CHA’s Henry Gilbert wrestles an Archbishop Wood opponent. Gilbert took 4th  place in the 171lbs. weight class. For more photos visit www.chlocalphotos.com. (Photos by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

At last weekend’s PA Independent School Wrestling Tournament, meet host Germantown Academy duplicated its 2007 finish, placing second behind defending team champ Wyoming Seminary of Wilkes Barre.

The Inter-Ac League champion GA Patriots had four wrestlers win class championships, but so did “Sem,” and Blue Knights also picked up four second-place finishes to GA’s three. With a third and a fifth-place showing as well, the upstate squad piled up 254 team points, while the Pats posted 241. Northeast Catholic High School was not far behind with 234, and La Salle High placed fourth with 171.5 points.

The class champions for the Patriots were freshman Chris Dinnien (103 lbs.), sophomore Pat Owens (119), senior Andrew Grabfelder (130), and junior Mike Harvey (171), and the runners-up were sophomore Brian McCauley (135), sophomore Dan Grabfelder (152), and senior Ben Finelli (189).

With one second-place and one fourth-place performance, Chestnut Hill Academy’s Blue Devils improved their standing from 10th a year ago to eighth this time around, scoring 99.5 points. Sophomore Justin Heller was runner-up at 112 lbs., and senior Henry Gilbert got fourth at 171.

Two other area squads did not fare as well in the 31-team field; Germantown Friends was 28th with nine total points, and Penn Charter was 30th with four points.

Germantown Academy’s Andrew Grabfelder, who’s been accepted at Columbia University, garnered a pair of individual honors after he claimed the 130 lb. title. In a vote of the coaches on hand, he was named Outstanding Wrestler of the tournament, and he also received the Ronald K. Nelson Award, which goes to the senior who has scored the most total points at the tourney throughout his four-year high school career.

Both Germantown Friends and Penn Charter have been struggling to fill weight classes for much of the season. The GFS Tigers only entered six wrestlers in last weekend’s tourney, and the Quakers of Penn Charter filled just eight of the 14 slots.

Each athlete was guaranteed at least two matches at the event, but if he lost at the outset of the main draw and then suffered another defeat right away in the consolation bracket, he was out of the competition. This was the fate that befell four of the six Tigers. Meanwhile, sophomore 103 Jesse Furokawa lost a decision in his tourney opener, but then came back to record a pair of pins in the consolation draw before he submitted to a pin himself in the consolation quarterfinals. GFS junior 145 Dan Feingold also had a decision go against him in the beginning, and when he moved to the consolations, he pinned his first rival, then ended his run on the short end of a close decision (2-0).

Six of Charter’s eight competitors were victims of the fatal one-two punch that quickly eliminated them from the tourney field. The other two, junior 130 Ben Fries and freshman 135 Gene Pak, each wrestled three bouts and went 1-2. Fries lost one close decision (11-9) and then won another in the consolation draw (8-7) before bowing out with a 19-10 loss. Pak’s contests all ended with pins, with the victory coming in his consolation draw opener.

Staffing problems have hampered Chestnut Hill Academy in the past, but the Blue Devils forfeited very few bouts this year and ended up in a three-way tie for second place in the Inter-Ac League (with Episcopal and Haverford). A weight-qualifying snafu left the Blue Devils without a 140-pounder last weekend, but they filled every other category, with freshmen Matt Rubin and Dan Gallagher each bumping up one class, to 145 and 152, respectively.

Four Devils each made one of the aforementioned early exits. Elsewhere, it was pins all the way producing 1-2 records for sophomores Andrew Greenspon (119) and Will Emery (275), who each picked up a win by fall in their first match of consolations. At 145, Rubin lost by pin and then won in the same fashion. He acquired a second victory by forfeit later in the consolation draw, then departed with a loss by decision. Sophomore 189 Brendan Spearing was also 2-2, getting pinned in the main draw and then matting his next two opponents before losing a decision that wrapped up his weekend.

CHA’s other five men placed at the tourney, where points were awarded for wrestlers who finished first through eighth in the various weight classes.

Junior 130 Nick Varallo went 2-1 in the main draw (all pins), and in the consolations he won by fall, lost a 4-3 decision, and then finally secured seventh place through a 4-2 victory. Gallagher also went 2-1 in both the main draw and the consolations, winning two matches by pin and two by decision (3-0 and 7-5). He left the main draw with a 6-4 loss to Wyoming Seminary’s Donovan Samo, and he wound up with sixth place after losing a 6-3 decision to the same opponent in the fifth/sixth match.

CHA took away fourth place at 171 courtesy of Gilbert and fifth place at 135 thanks to his fellow senior co-captain, Alex Blenheim. Blenheim was pinned in his opener but recovered nicely in the consolation wrestle-backs, winning a technical fall and a 5-0 decision before suffering an 8-3 defeat. He later won the fifth/sixth match by default.

With 5-2, 10-0 and 4-3 decisions, Gilbert went through to the main semifinals, where he was pinned by the champion from GA, Harvey. In the wrestle-backs he split two decisions (5-3, 4-5) to come in fourth. At 112 lbs., Blue Devil junior Justin Heller won his way into the finals with a pair of pins and then a 5-1 decision in the semi’s.

Germantown Academy did not field a heavyweight for the meet, but each of its other 13 entries won at least one match. Freshman John Allenson went 1-2 at 140, while sophomores T.J. Nolan (145) and Kevin Solakian (160) and senior Kevin Blalock were all 2-2 in the tourney. Blalock almost made it to the consolation semifinals, but in the quarters he was edged out in overtime by a single point, 3-2.

Freshman Neil Ahern won a tech-fall in the main draw and another in his consolation debut. He had dropped a decision in his second main-draw match. He was pinned in his fourth bout and went into the seventh/eighth wrestle-off, which he won easily, 17-4.

After starting out with a pin, an OT loss put sophomore 125 Shawn Amato into consolations, where he got through to the semifinals by taking two decisions (10-2, 5-2). Although he came up short in two more decisions that followed, he claimed sixth place overall. The other seven Patriot grapplers all won through to the main finals.

Although the Patriots ultimately could not overtake Wyoming Seminary, they improved their team standing during the final round. Going into the championship matches, GA had 223 points and trailed not only the Blue Knights (236), but also Northeast Catholic (224).

In the only one-period contest throughout the finals, GA’s Dinnien launched the proceedings by pinning Daniel Traficanti of Kiski School (located near Pittsburgh) with 30 seconds still remaining in the opening round. The GA 103 had reached the finals with three pins and a 9-1 major decision.

At 112, Kyle Johnson of Wyoming Seminary gained a modest 3-0 lead over CHA’s Heller during the first two periods. Starting on the bottom for the third stanza, the Blue Devil junior almost made good a stand-up escape, but was brought back down onto his back and pinned with 1:19 remaining in the match.

Having reached the 119 lb. final with two pins and a 3-2 decision, Owens of GA scored the only point of the first two frames with an escape, but he was reversed by Wyoming’s Simon Kitzis early in round three. Owens escaped midway through the period, and with time ticking away he shot for a takedown and quickly spun behind Kitzis to complete it with just four seconds to go, netting a 4-2 victory. Next, Kiski’s Brock Livorio pinned La Salle’s Ryan Ginsburg right at the end of the 125 lb. match.

In another GA-Wyoming clash, the Patriots’ Andrew Grabfelder was tied up 2-2 with the Knights’ Nicky Gordon after two rounds. Grabfelder, who’d posted three pins and a tech fall en route to center stage, captured a 4-2 decision when he was awarded a takedown right at the edge of the mat with a mere two seconds left in the final match.

The two schools squared off yet again in the 135 lb. championship, since a pair of pins and two decisions (10-2, 10-5) had brought McCauley face-to-face with Sem’s Cullen Isenberg. Isenberg went ahead on a takedown, then an escape and takedown by McCauley put him up 3-2 in the second round. Isenberg reversed with seven seconds remaining in the period for a 4-3 edge, and his momentum carried into the final frame as he won, 11-5.

Another important match went Wyoming’s way at 140, where Adam Healey registered a 4-1 decision over Matt Dugan of Northeast Catholic.

The Wilkes Barre squad lost at 145 though, as the Knights’ Justin Martinez forced the bout into overtime at 4-4, but then was taken down by Kiski’s John Regan in the sudden death OT stint. In the following bout, the Patriots also missed a chance to pick up some points. Kevin Mallon of Northeast Catholic took a 4-1 lead in the first segment at 152 lbs. and held on for an 8-5 victory over Dan Grabfelder. The younger of the GA brothers had logged a pin, two tech falls, and a 6-0 decision earlier in the tourney.

After Malvern’s Neil Willis beat Cardinal O’Hara’s Jim Starr, 13-7, at 160 lbs., GA and Wyoming were back at it in the 171 lb. final. With three pins and a tech fall, Harvey had gone through the bracket to meet the Blue Knights’ Jay Wieller. With a third-period escape, the GA man completed a comeback to edge Wieller in a low-scoring contest, 3-2.

Ben Finelli of the Patriots had put up two pins and two decisions (3-0, 10-5) to make the finals at 189, but here Hayden Schmucker of Academy of the New Church went up 2-0 in the opening round and then pinned Finelli with 1:12 to go in the second period.

Wyoming claimed its final victory at 215 lbs., where Joe McMullen took a 7-1 decision from Northeast Catholic’s Chris James. The later school would prevail at 275 lbs. (heavyweight), where Eric French of the Falcons pinned Friends Central’s Fernando Jones in the middle of the second round.

The independent school tourney will have a much different look next year, losing a third of its participants as 11 teams from the Philadelphia Catholic League leave the ranks to participate in the PA Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA).