Delaware Valley’s wrestling program proves that old-fashioned ways still work just fine in the smartphone era.
Winning a state championship, as the Terriers did in thrilling fashion Sunday afternoon, 30-28 over Hanover Park at a well-packed Pine Belt Arena in Toms River, validates the unique way Del Val does things.
The Terriers wrestle in a well-worn gym, not a spanking-new athletic complex. The Terriers sport an old-time look on their uniforms in a time where many singlets look as if they came from an explosion at a paint factory.
Del Val still relies on multi-sport athletes in an era of extreme specialization – football players, baseball infielders, even rowers such as junior 195-pounder Eli Kalfaian who contributed a clutch pin in Sunday’s state final. (Maybe wrestling coaches should push for crew as a scholastic sport.)
Del Val still, as Bucknell-bound senior 138-pounder Matt Kolonia noted, pulls athletes from the hallways and turns them into pretty solid wrestlers when many coaches want year-round wrestlers
In a fast-paced time when what was accomplished yesterday gets forgotten today, Delaware Valley honors its history which, in turn, inspires its athletes.
“It’s so exciting to win a state championship and be part of it knowing the history behind our school,” said sophomore AJ DeRosa, who clinched Sunday’s win with a smart, savvy and well-controlled 3-1 decision at 120 pounds “My father, Al, went to Del Val (class of 1984) and was at school when Del Val won two state championships and he always told me how exciting it was when they won.” Think that made DeRosa extra-motivated to be a Terrier and to help bring home a title?
Del Val changes the number of total wins in program history after every win on an old-fashioned, non-digital sign in its wrestling room. Every wrestler knows the total (752 now) and takes pride in it. Getting to “change the number” after wins is a treasured honor. Again, history is harnessed for success.
In an atomistic world where many scholastic sports teams, even very successful ones, become detached from their environment and attract little student interest or community support, Delaware Valley wrestling thrives because of the deep roots it has planted. The Terriers have more student support than almost any other school in the lehighvalleylive region (along with Phillipsburg) and their community support is not far behind.
“I only started wrestling as a freshman and I didn’t realize how much support we have in the community,” said senior 285-pounder Josh LaDuca, whose 2-1 decision Sunday proved to be critical to the state championship.
Del Val coach Andy Fitz uses an old-fashioned game to help reel in new recruits.
“He puts up signs on his classroom door saying ‘Come out for wrestling, play dodgeball,” Kolonia said.
Dodgeball?
“I’m pretty good at it,” LaDuca said proudly.
And dodgeball works its purpose.
“It’s fun, and the fun helps people stay in the sport,” Kolonia said. “And it helps us become closer asa team.
The idea that high school sports might be fun seems a throwback too, given today’s grim pursuit of often-distant collegiate scholarship rewards and a relentless driving force that winning is all that matters.
Delaware Valley seems like a team that would be an awful lot of fun to wrestle for. Old-fashioned? Maybe. Also very effective.
Much of the Terriers’ approach springs from an equally old-fashioned belief that wrestling is a team sport. That concept, relentlessly mocked by many alleged mat gurus and increasingly downplayed in even in the scholastic sport as dual-meet wrestling seems to be dying a slow death, attains the status almost of a religion at Del Val.
Doubt that? Listen to Kolonia, who is by any standard a legitimate contender for state individual honors in Atlantic City next month.
“I would rather have what we won today than a win an (individual) state championship,” he said.
Team comes first, second, and third at Delaware Valley. If that occasionally means the Terriers miss out on solo accomplishments (Del Val occasionally suffers from inexplicable brain cramps in individual tournaments that baffle Fitz as much as anybody) they’ll happily make the trade.
Conversations with Delaware Valley wrestlers don’t take long to get to words like “family” and “brothers.” They can be meaningless clichés for some – not for the Terriers.
“We have 13 seniors on the team and every single one us has grown up together, we take vacations together, we spend all our time together,” Kolonia said. “There were no words for how we felt after last year (when they lost by a point in the Group 2 final to Emerson/Park Ridge) and after that one of us was focused on the same goal, the state championship. And we accomplished it, together.”
Old-fashioned ways, perhaps, but the success they achieve at Delaware Valley wrestling will never go out of style.
Brad Wilson may be reached at bwilson@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @bradwsports. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.
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