Jan 3, 2019 3 min read

Dom Fundy might have hit the proverbial wall.

The senior from Beth-Center has struggled early in the high school wrestling season with his conditioning.

So he is taking a break.

Fundy will skip the Tri-CADA Wrestling Tournament, which gets underway at 4:30 p.m. today at Trinity High School.

Semifinals are at 10:30 a.m., Saturday and finals are at 2:30 p.m.

“He needs a break,” said Beth-Center head coach Gary Welsh. “We’re going to keep him out of the Tri-CADA and get him some time off. We rushed him a little after football. He stepped right into it after football, and that might have been too soon.”

Fundy won his weight class at the season-opening Chartiers-Houston Tournament but he admitted he was not in wrestling condition at that point. He won an 11-8 decision over Harvey Rauch of Upper St. Clair in the 195-pound championship match.

“I have forgotten how much it takes, conditioning-wise, to compete,” Fundy said after beating Rauch. “You can’t understand it unless you’ve wrestled. I can’t even explain it.”

Fundy injured his right thumb in a tournament held the weekend before the 2018 postseason. The hand was placed in a cast and he could not do any meaningful wrestling activities for months. It was a difficult blow for someone who had finished as a Class AA state runner-up at 182 pounds as a sophomore.

Fundy entered the Southmoreland Tournament last week and was the No. 2 seed at 195 pounds. He was upset, 10-5, by Luke Montgomery of Bethel Park in the first round, then forfeited out of the tournament in the first round of consolations to Chase Daniels of South Side Beaver.

“He has a tough schedule,” said Welsh. “He’s been wrestling in our dual meets and working out at a couple of wrestling clubs, Quest and Young Guns. He’s going to return for the dual meets but not the (regular season) tournaments.”

Fundy was in the lineup for Beth-Center’s dual meet win over Bentworth in a Section 2B bout in Class AA Thursday night. He won an impressive 11-5 decision over John Vargo at 195 pounds. Vargo is rated No. 2 at 182 pounds in the newly released Observer-Reporter Wrestling Rankings. The Bulldogs are 3-0 in the section and tied for first with McGuffey.

“It’s a balancing act,” Welsh said of deciding on workloads for the multi-sport athletes at such a small school as Beth-Center. “I think 80 percent of our wrestlers play football. There is a big difference between football conditioning and wrestling.”

The tournament will be the first for Canon-McMillan’s Gerrit Nijenhuis since he had a raucous ending to his 5-2 loss to Carter Starocci of Erie Cathedral Prep in the 182-pound finals at last weekend’s Powerade Wrestling Tournament. Nijenhuis is expected to be the top seed at 182 pounds.

Other top-ranked wrestlers expected to compete are Jett Pattison (126), Ethan Barr (152) and Christian Clutter (170) of McGuffey.