Trinity breaks postseason drought
What most of the crowd inside Trinity High School’s gymnasium Monday night might not have realized was just how special an event this was for the school’s wrestling program.
The Hillers trailed Upper St. Clair by 10 points with five bouts to go, took advantage of two forfeits, then swept the final three bouts for a 43-25 victory in the Class AAA preliminary round of the WPIAL Team Tournament.
The victory was the first in this tournament since the 2005-06 season, when the Hillers came away with a 28-27 victory over Waynesburg in the first round.
Not only was this victory important in breaking the drought of postseason wins, is also was another step forward under head coach Mark Powell.
“Eight years?” Powell guessed at how long the postseason drought extended. “I’m not sure. Any time you get a win in the playoffs, especially the WPIALs in Triple-A, that says a lot. We are moving forward as a team. It’s a nice feeling. We have to keep grinding.”
Trinity (5-2) advances to the first round of the team tournament Wednesday. The Hillers travel to No. 4 seed Franklin Regional, the defending WPIAL and PIAA team champions, for a 6 p.m. dual meet.
There is a slight possibility Spencer Lee, Franklin Regional’s two-time state champion, might make his season debut. Lee has been out with a shoulder injury and had set the individual postseason as his return date. Franklin Regional will be without Gus Solomon, who like Lee has a shoulder injury.
“I think we match up great with them,” Powell said. “I know they are the fourth seed but I told our guys not to look at that. … You have seeds four through 12, when you look at the matchups, anybody can beat anybody. So we’ll see.”
Trinity (5-2) and Upper St. Clair (8-5) got into the preliminary round taking different routes. Trinity knocked off Hopewell, 45-25, to take the fifth spot out of Section 4. Upper St. Clair was the fourth-place team from Section 2.
Trinity dominated the lower weights and Upper St. Clair ran off a string of wins in the upper weights. The match, appropriately enough, started in the middle. And it was pretty even there.
USC jumped to a 7-0 lead on decisions by Tom Kyle at the opening weight, 138 pounds, and John Wertz. Trinity took a 15-7 lead on the strength of a pin by Zach Magdich at 152 pounds, a decision by Jarred Rice at 160 and a pin by Justin Ritter at 170.
The Panthers swept through the upper weights, with the help of pins from Eli Grape at 195 and Jake Slinger at 220 pounds. They also got big wins from Jack Martin, who stopped Dawson Leavines, 9-6, at 182 and Jay Pollock, who edged Austin Fife, 3-1, at heavyweight to make it 25-15.
The two forfeits put Trinity back in the lead, 27-25, and pins by Mike Kalosky at 120 and D.J. Long at 126 put the match away.
“Our 106-pounder has a high ankle sprain and wasn’t here and Grant Walnoha didn’t make weight at 113 so he ended up wrestling at 120,” said Upper St. Clair head coach Sean O’Rourke. “I would have like to not have given up the falls we did, and I thought the heavyweight match would be a big one and that did go our way, but the rest of the match didn’t. Pollock has been wrestling well the second half of the season and it was a good battle at heavyweight.”
Powell was looking for wins at 145, 152 and 182.
“But that just might have been me being greedy,” said Powell. “I believe was should have won those. I wanted three more. We have to expect to win. We challenge these guys. They know I don’t like to lose. I expect to have quality wrestling, and when we don’t get that, it falls to us. … When I wrestled here, we expected to win. We have to get that culture back, it is coming back and it is fun to see.”