Hillers advance to Day 3, get rematch with Connellsville
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HERSHEY – The rematch is on.
One week after wrestling in the finals of the WPIAL Class 3A Team Tournament, Trinity and Connellsville will do it again at the state tournament.
The Hillers downed LaSalle College 43-25 while the Falcons topped Council Rock South 31-28 in the second round of consolations Friday night at the Giant Center.
The only difference between last week and Saturday’s action is the time of the day and the length of each individual match will be five minutes instead of six because of the rules in consolation bouts. The dual meet is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m.
“It is close here with Connellsville and Council Rock South, so we’ll see what happens,” said Trinity coach Ron Tarquinio as the Falcons were finishing up their dual meet with Council Rock South.
Connellsville edged Trinity 33-32 last week to win its eighth WPIAL title, but Falcons coach Bill Swink expects a battle from the first whistle.
“It may come down to who wins the coin flip,” Swink said. “We are glad to get two big wins today against Cathedral Prep and Council Rock South, but we don’t want to be satisfied with just getting to Saturday.”
Trinity (13-2) won the first seven bouts against LaSalle (15-3) for a 35-0 lead, that assured the Hillers the first tiebreaker if the meet went to criteria.
Zane Garner (127), Blake Reihner (139) and Bodie Morgan (172) won by fall; TJ Allison (145) and Cael Nicolella (160) secured technical falls; Jackson Bruckner (152) won by major decision and Devin Junko (133) rallied for a 9-8 decision.
“We knew that they had to pin out to beat us by a point, so we had a pretty good feeling with the guys coming up that we could get the job done,” Tarquinio said. “We figured there were some matches that even if we didn’t get the win, we wouldn’t get pinned.”
Despite trailing by 35 with six bouts remaining, LaSalle continued to battle and cut the deficit to 35-18 on pins by Cormac Morrisey (189), Mario Verrecchia (215) and Andrew Brennan (285).
“We have some guys at the heavier weights that we hope can do some good things in the individual tournaments,” LaSalle coach Benjamin Courtney said.
Jackson Hersh earned a 16-0 technical fall in 4:13 at 107 to cut the Explorers’ deficit to 12 with two matches left, but Trinity had clinched knowing it would win on criteria.
“I thought we wrestled pretty good and we got some of our backups in,” Tarquinio said. “It was nice to save some guys and rest them a little bit for tomorrow. We knew what we had left with our last few guys.”
Jake Wright assured the dual meet wouldn’t come down to criteria with a fall in 59 seconds at 114. Dom Canali followed with a 10-0 major decision at 121.
“Jake is approaching 30 wins this year,” Tarquinio said. “He has been wrestling really well lately.”
The Hillers lost in the quarterfinals Friday afternoon to defending two-time champion Bethlehem Catholic, 41-24.
Trinity led 15-9 after five bouts on the strength of a decision by Junko (133) and pins by Reihner (139) and Allison (145).
Charlie Scanlan’s decision at 172 upped Bethlehem Catholic’s lead to 24-15 before Morgan (189) won by decision and Robbie Allison (215) won by fall to tie the dual meet at 24-24 with three bouts remaining.
Bethlehem Catholic won the final three matches with falls.
“They (Bethlehem Catholic) may have graduated some top guys from last year’s team but still have a lot of horsepower,” Tarquinio said.