Feb 3, 2016 5 min read

MURRYSVILLE – Often times, the best-made plans by coaches go awry.

So it was Wednesday night in the WPIAL Class AAA Team Wrestling Tournament for both Trinity and Waynesburg.

Trinity’s Mark Powell and Waynesburg’s Joe Throckmorton believed they knew the avenue to success for their respective teams in first-round matches against host Franklin Regional and North Allegheny, respectively.

Unfortunately, the Hillers dropped a 42-33 decision to the Panthers while Waynesburg fell to North Allegheny, 42-20, ending their team portion of the wrestling season.

“Win big, lose small,” said Powell, who had the Hillers in the team tournament for the first time in 10 years. “You can’t be giving up sixes.”

The issue for Waynesburg was a little different. While Trinity was a decided underdog against the two-time defending WPIAL champions, the Raiders’ match against North Allegheny was more of a tossup.

“There were about six matches out of the 14 that we felt were 50-50,” Throckmorton said. “We went 1-5 in those 50-50 matches. Reverse those scores and it’s a close match. We knew we had to wrestle well. There were a lot of close matches and we lost them doing a lot of stupid stuff at the end.”

It didn’t start well for the Raiders in the opening bout at 132 as Logan Henderson dropped a 4-2 decision to Zach Stedeford, who had bumped up from 126. But Shaun Wilson righted the ship at 138, beating Jake Hinkson 7-3 to tie the score at 3-3. Wilson entered the bout ranked second in the WPIAL in the weight class and Hinkson was third.

North Allegheny made it 6-3 with a 5-2 decision by A.J. Boeh at 145 over Trey Howard, but Terry Victor had a dominating performance at 152, scoring a 15-0 technical fall over Jacob Smalley to give the Raiders the lead, 8-6.

That was when things fell apart for Waynesburg. North Allegheny’s Sean Hoover rode out Kyle Homet after scoring an escape in the first overtime to pull out a 2-1 victory, and Jacob Fritsch followed with a pin at 170 to put the Tigers ahead, 15-8.

With a chance to stem the tide, Colin McCracken, ranked second at 182 pounds, took the mat against top-ranked Jake Woodley. McCracken turned a deep single by Woodley into a first-period takedown for a 2-0 lead. Woodley scored a point on an escape early in the second period, then allowed McCracken to start neutral to open the third period.

Woodley got in deep on another single with 1:19 remaining in the period for a takedown to tie the bout but immediately allowed McCracken up to give the Waynesburg junior a 4-3 lead.

As the two scrambled along the edge with time running out, McCracken appeared to have the advantage, or at least a stalemate, but Woodley locked up his legs with one second remaining to win, 5-4.

“You make a mistake here or there and you lose the match,” said Throckmorton. “That was one of our 50-50 matches. He had the match won. When you’re winning a match like that, you have to figure out a way to finish it off. We work on that; it’s just converting it to these situations. He learned it the hard way.”

North Allegheny then got a quick pin at 220, and heavyweight Chuck Sanders fought off his back against Chase Ownes for a reversal into a pin that put the Tigers ahead 33-8.

Despite pins from Colby Morris at 113 and Caleb Morris at 120, Waynesburg had dug themselves too big of a hole.

Powell knew what Throckmorton was feeling.

The Hillers grabbed a quick 9-0 lead over Franklin Regional, getting a pin from Ryan Yocum and a 6-3 decision from Gino Cecchine at 138.

But Franklin Regional rattled off pins in five of the next six bouts, with a Josh Ritter pin at 170 scoring the lone points for Trinity.

A 3-0 win by Logan Miller over Jacob Dobich at 220 put Franklin Regional ahead, 33-15. Though the Hillers picked up a forfeit at heavyweight and pins from Michael Kalosky (120) and D.J. Long (126), the Panthers had no need to send defending two-time PIAA champion Spencer Lee to the mat.

Lee, a junior, has not wrestled this season after injuring his shoulder in a national event during the summer. But he was cleared to wrestle in the postseason and would have wrestled Kalosky if the match had been in question. The Panthers also were without Gus Solomon, the WPIAL’s top-rated 138 pounder.

“If we were going to get him, now would have been the time,” said Powell of a potential meeting between Lee and Kalosky, who is ranked fifth at 126. “Michael is tough. He wouldn’t have backed down.”

Lee also did not wrestle against North Allegheny and Franklin Regional was upset by the Tigers, 37-20.

For Trinity, going against a battle-tested lineup such as Franklin Regional was a big step forward.

“When you’re not used to being here, in matches like that, little things matter,” Powell said. “Get the major, don’t give the major. Stay off your back. There were two matches, one we were winning and got pinned and another where we were down by two and got pinned. That can’t happen. Learning is half the battle.”