In the Nazareth wrestling team’s first match since beating Bethlehem Catholic for the District 11 Class 3A title, the Blue Eagles didn’t come out soaring.
The District 11 champions split the first four bouts of the PIAA Class 3A first-round match against Owen J. Roberts on Thursday night at the Giant Center in Hershey.
It wasn’t the start the Blue Eagles wanted and one of their senior leaders let his teammates know about it.
“We started off a little flat,” Nazareth junior Cade Wilson said. “One of our leaders, Travis (Stefanik), he got our group together. He said, ‘everybody, we’ve got to stop wrestling flat. We got to go hard. We can’t take this team lightly.’ So, I think that really helped. That’s what we did.”
Nazareth went on to win nine of the final 10 bouts to run away with a 53-13 victory.
The Blue Eagles will wrestle District 3 runner-up Cedar Cliff in the quarterfinals at 2 p.m. Friday. Cedar Cliff beat District 2 champion Hazleton 43-16 in the first round.
With the match tied 10-10 after four bouts, the Blue Eagles got a technical fall (16-1 in 2:57) from junior Ryan O’Grady (126 pounds), a 7-6 decision from senior Trevor Tarsi (132) and a 6-4 decision from junior Ian Pulli (138) to take a 21-10 lead.
After Owen J. Roberts’ Daniel Mancinni won by decision at 145 pounds, Nazareth recorded the match’s final 32 points to secure the convincing victory.
“I think we started off a little slow but we started picking it up and feeding off each others’ energy. And we’re really coming together at the end of the season,” Tarsi said.
“The warm-up thing was not as good as what we wanted,” Crowell said. “We had intended to get a workout in at a local high school late this morning. All the schools were closed, we couldn’t get in. So we never got out of our hotel until we had to come here. Matches went pretty long. We only got on the mat for about 5, 10 minutes or so. Normally we do a better warm-up than that. I thought they responded well given the circumstances. Ideally, we’d be able to warm up a little bit more.”
Freshman Andrew Cerniglia (1:53 at 113), junior Sammy Sasso (0:51 at 152), senior Brock Wilson (1:59 at 160), junior Cade Wilson (3:30 at 170) and junior Zac Keifer (2:49 at 182) all had pins for the Blue Eagles.
O’Grady and Stefanik each had technical falls and Andrew Smith won a major decision for Nazareth.
“We did well. They’re a good team. They’re a well-coached team. They’re very fundamentally sound. Even though they’re not in our district, I probably know that team as well as any. We scrimmage them every year and we have for every year I’ve been at Nazareth. It was a good win. They have tough guys,” Crowell said about Owen J. Roberts.
The Blue Eagles now face Cedar Cliff, a team they beat 42-27 last year in the state preliminaries.
“We beat them in a pretty good match. Upset one of their guys. It was a pretty close match so we know they’re tough. We better be on top of our game tomorrow to have a chance,” Crowell said.
Josh Folck may be reached at jfolck@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshFolck. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.
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