Mar 14, 2016 4 min read

Final thoughts on the PIAA Wrestling Tournament:

It didn’t take long for the name Cary Kolat to come up after Gavin Teasdale won his second consecutive PIAA Class AA wrestling title Saturday afternoon in Hershey.

Teasdale, a sophomore from Jefferson-Morgan, polished off a second consecutive undefeated season, and from the way he wrestled, it would be hard not to imagine him becoming a four-time undefeated state champion.

Which is what Kolat did while wrestling for Jefferson-Morgan from 1988-92. Kolat compiled a 137-0 record and is one of just six wrestlers to complete his varsity career with at least three state titles and an unbeaten record.

“My goal is to have two people – me and Cary – from the same school who are undefeated four-time champions,” said Teasdale. “There is nobody like him. It would be cool to be going to that school and knowing it’s the first school in history to do that.”

Teasdale finished second in the voting for Outstanding Wrestler and for good reason. He blew away his opponent in the 113-pound finals, Kollin Myers of Boiling Springs, with a fourth technical fall. Teasdale outscored his four state tournament opponents, 96-35, and most of the points he gave up were uncontested escapes.

Teasdale is on course to finish his varsity career with a 164-0 record and seems to have found the right formula for doing so. Last season, he was pushed by some of his state tournament opponents, even being put on his back once. But in this year’s event, Teasdale would have none of that. At one point in the finals bout, Myers looked over to the corner where his coaches were sitting with a dazed look on his face. He had just been taken down seven times, trailed 14-6, and it was still just the first period.

If the pattern holds and injuries are avoided, the final two years of wrestling for Teasdale might be easier than the first two. It’s likely wrestlers will try to avoid the weight class he’s competing in because they realize the road to a gold medal is blocked.

It won’t matter.

The way Teasdale wrestled, it’s not a matter of whether he will win, only by what margin.

• If there was a lesson to be learned from Mike Carr’s run to the state title in the 145-pound weight class in Class AA, it’s this: trust your ability.

Carr, a senior from South Fayette High School, suffered a torn meniscus the week of the individual section tournaments and it weighed on his mind for a while, affecting his performance. Once he realized he could still wrestle in the same dominant way, the gold medal was his.

Carr depended on other skills a little more after the injury and actually became harder to beat because of it. A physically gifted wrestler, Carr gave up only four bout points in the state tournament, an incredibly low number for the talent level of the weight class.

Carr got a break when his semifinal opponent, Caleb Clymer of Northwest Lehigh, forfeited because of an injured leg. Didn’t matter. Clymer, on one good leg, would have been mauled by Carr.

Carr’s transition from injured wrestler to state champion came before the WPIAL Championships, where he finally felt comfortable, forgot about the injury and trusted his ability.

A gold medal performance was the result.

• No wrestler had a better state tournament than Brian Courtney, a junior from Athens.

Courtney earned the Outstanding Wrestler trophy in Class AA by defeating three defending state champions on his way to the 126-pound gold medal.

No wrestler had accomplished that since the tournament began in 1938.

Most impressive was that he outscored the three champions – Bedford’s Jon Gabriel, Reynold’s Cole Matthews and Central Cambria’s Max Murin – by a combined score of 20-8.

• The possibility exists that the Pennsylvania Wrestling Coaches Association will try to scrap the 20-man brackets at the state tournament, returning to the old 16-man format. When it was changed last year, 112 matches were added to an already tight schedule in Hershey. Some wrestlers, such as Clymer, had to wrestle five times in three days to reach the finals. It was possible for others to wrestle seven times to place third.

The 20-man bracket added an extra qualifier for the District 7 Class AAA tournament, and that was a plus.

Many coaches in an informal poll expressed a dislike for the expanded brackets and a move could be made this summer to return to 16.

Assistant sports editor Joe Tuscano can be reached at jtuscano@observer-reporter.com