Kiski Area wrestling falls short at Quad Meet against top teams

By: Greg Macafee
Saturday, December 21, 2019 | 9:21 PM

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Having the opportunity to test your wrestlers throughout the regular season is the best way to improve for the postseason.

On Friday, Kiski Area went through one of those situations as it hosted three of the top five wrestling teams in WPIAL Class AAA for the Kiski Area Quad Meet. The Cavaliers lost their two matches by a combined 11 points.

Kiski Area dug itself an early 35-0 hole against Seneca Valley when it lost the first eight matches, including two by one point.

“We just didn’t wrestle well as a group in the first match, and I mean these guys, we’ve never been in that situation. That’s a big hole to dig out of,” Kiski Area coach Chris Heater said. “To go out the final six matches and tell them to all get pins to win when the guys in front of them didn’t wrestle well (is a challenge). But, hey, that goes on the entire team.”

The two big matches of the evening came in the 113- and 126-pound weight classes. Seneca Valley’s Tyler Chappell got a 4-3 decision over Kiski Area freshman Ryan Kligensmith in a match that came down to the final few seconds.

Then, Dylan Chappell snatched a 3-2 win from Kiski Area’s Dom Giordano in another tight battle.

“I was surprised. I mean at 126, I thought Dom wrestled Chappell extremely well,” Heater said. “He did a great job, but I was hoping to win 106 or 113. I thought we were right in those. The first one got away from us a bit, and we were we right in there in the second one.”

Starting at 160 pounds against Seneca Valley, the Cavaliers needed six straight pins. They got three, two major decisions and a decision. Jack Blumer (170), Nick Delp (182) and Stone Joseph (285) had pins for the Cavaliers.

“It’s hard to wrestle guys that are just out there to not get pinned, and (the Cavaliers) still got pins,” Heater said. “So, a lot of kudos to those guys for wrestling the way they did.”

In their second match of the evening, a rematch of the WPIAL Class AAA semifinals last season, the Cavaliers improved.

Giordano got a 5-3 decision over Canon-Mac’s Jacob Gardner, and the some of the heavier weight classes had pins for the Cavaliers. One of the biggest came at 152 pounds when Sammy Starr got a pin at 3 minutes, 42 seconds.

“That was a huge stick,” Heater said. “He was wrestling a really good match, and then he had that flurry right at the end. He wrestled well enough. He certainly deserved that.”

Blumer (160), Delp (170) and Brayden Roscosky (195) had pins for the Cavaliers, and Heater could see the improvement in their second match of the night.

“We challenged them to be better and wrestle more like themselves in the second match, and I feel like they did that,” Heater said. “But even in that one, we had a couple close matches that we let get away from us, and that proved to be the difference.”

The match came down to the final weight class at 106 pounds. Antonio Giordano needed a pin to win the match and came close on a few occasions but finished with a 8-4 decision.

Greg Macafee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Greg by email at gmacafee@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Tags: Kiski Area