Watchung Hills had the right idea Tuesday night in its match against Delaware Valley. When wrestling the Terriers, make sure you have the match locked up before you get to the Del Val lightweights.
That’s exactly what the Warriors did as they won most of the close bouts, got bonus points in others and defeated Delaware Valley 33-28.
Watchung Hills had the match cinched when 113 pounder Dylan Kowlakowski won a 9-4 decision to put the Warriors up 33-6 with four bouts left to wrestle.
From there, DelVal turned the strength of its lineup loose and after Cooper Gill won a 10-2 major decision at 120 over Watchung's Teagan Wittmaack, Gage Crater at 126, Chase Christie at 132 and Corey Crater at 138 all recorded pins. But it wasn't enough to close the gap as Watchung upped its record to 6-2 and Delaware Valley suffered its second loss of the year and is now 11-2.
“We knew it was going to be a dogfight,” Watchung coach Jim Huff said after the win. “Since we started at 145 we knew we had to get ahead early, take a good lead and hang on at the end.”
While the last four bouts didn't go Watchung's way, the Warriors got the work done through the first 10 weights, particularly at 170 and 182.
At 170 Zach Medina, who has been in and out of the lineup for the Warriors so far this season, slapped a headlock on the Terriers' Nick Ferri and picked up a 27 second pin. One bout later, Watchung got another big win when Chris Baker scored some late points in both the second and third periods to win 8-7 over Matt Zdepski.
Zdepski had gotten out to a solid lead and seemed in control of the action when he led 6-2 at the end of the second period. But Baker got a reversal with less than five seconds remaining in the period to close the gap to two. He tied the bout with a third period reversal but when Zdepski escaped and held off Baker's repeated takedown attempts, the bout seemed all but settled.
That was when Baker scored a takedown in the final 10 seconds to give Watchung a key win.
“We bumped him up a weight class, so we knew he was giving up weight,” Huff said of Baker. “We were a little worried about how he would be in the third period against a true 182 pounder and I think that he showed his heart, his courage, his attitude and his effort. Chris did a great job.
“Zach Medina is our guy,” Huff added of his 170 pound winner. “He would be in a lot of lineups right now and he's trying to find his way in (our) lineup at one weight or another. Zach works hard every single day in the room and it showed today. I think he was a major reason why we won today.”
From there the Warriors got a 10-1 major decision from Gerard Aroneo at 195, a key 7-4 win by John Dusza over Nick Moose at 220, a 9-4 win by Dylan Kowlakowski over Robert Groogan at 113 and a pin from Nico Calello at 106.
Before Baker and Medina opened things up, Watchung had won two of the match's first three bouts as Jake Bash decisioned Shane Reynolds 9-3 at 145 and Blake Bahna got eight takedowns in scoring a technical fall at 160. Delaware Valley's Garrett Tettemer decisioned Jack Murray 5-2 at 152.
The only other bout of the first 10 that Watchung didn't get was at heavyweight where Delaware Valley's Zach Zuchowski gave up a lot of weight but was able to defeat Watchung's tough freshman 285 pounder Hunter Seubert 2-1 in overtime.
Zuchowski, normally a 195 pounder, weighed in at 198 and looked tentative as he squared off with the 253 pound Seubert. But by the second period he seemed to have his bearings and while he could not score on his feet he was able to get our from underneath both in regulation and in the second period of overtime. He won the bout by riding out Seubert for the full minute of the third overtime period.
“He was a lot bigger and way heavier than me,” Zuchowski admitted. “I was just trying to work in the first period and see what I was getting into. Then I just started to put the pedal to the metal and just go. I was somewhat confident (starting the third period of overtime with a 2-1 lead). It was dicey but I just went for the spiral ride and just tried to hook my knees around him and hold him down. There was a lot of pressure. I just went out and wrestled.”
For Delaware Valley the meeting between the leaders of the Delaware and Valley Divisions of the Skyland Conference did not turn out the way it hoped and Terrier coach Andy Fitz is now looking forward to how his team responds to its first close loss.
“We could wrestle Westfield 10,000 times and we wouldn't beat them once,” Fitz said of his team's earlier loss. “Watchung is a very good program too but on a different night this match might have gone our way. This is the first significant bump in the road we've had and now we're going to see how the kids respond.
“We do have a lot of seniors but most of the kids in the lineup are new. We get right back at it with two more matches this week and a tough quad on the weekend. We need to be ready to roll.”