North continues successful season on mat
by PATRICK J. NAGY Reporter

Williamsville North continued its best wrestling season since 1999-2000 with a huge 30-26 dual win over Clarence last Friday and a fifth place finish at the Depew Wildcat Tournament on Saturday.

"Hopefully, we're peaking at the right time," said North coach Brian Swatland.

North is 7-3 overall in duals, 4-3 in ECIC Division I. The Spartan team from 1999-2000 went 14-2.

This year, North has won the Amherst Duals and Williamsville North tournaments, came in 16th at the Niagara Falls Wrestling Officials Association Tournament and placed 12th at ECICs.

North's win over Clarence was the team's first victory over a ranked opponent (at the time was eighth in Western New York large schools, now unranked) in six years.

Down 26-21, Ansar Khan beat John Mergenhagen, 7-0, at 125 and Jake Caprow followed at 130 with a pin in 52 seconds over Bobby Godet to lift the Spartans to a 30-26 victory.

The most exciting match of the night was at 215 between North's Brad Adkins and Clarence's Pat Calhoun. Scoreless heading into the third period, Calhoun escaped Adkins but Adkins responded with a takedown with seven seconds left, keeping his toes in bounds. He held Calhoun down for the rest of the period to win 2-1.

At 160, Phil Constantinou scored a reversal at the end of the third period for a 3-1 decision. P.J. Abbarno knocked off Rick Walter, 4-3, at 171.

Nate Carbrey and Abbas Rizvi won by forfeit at 135 and 140 pounds, respectively.

At 189, Matt Aloisio dropped a 4-0 decision to Jim Skura, who would win at the Depew tournament.

"We wrestled a lot better than at Sweet Home (36-31 on Jan. 17)," said Swatland. "We got the match-ups we needed. It was a neat match because there was only one pin."

North had five place finishers at Depew. Abbarno won his second tournament at 160. Tommy Kellner and Carbrey took second place at 119 and 135, respectively. Ben DesSoye came in third at 275. Caprow came in fourth in a tough 130-weight class.

Abbarno, who won at the North Tournament 2½ weeks ago, pinned St. Mary of Lancaster's Brian Hinton in 2:46, defeated Clarence's Winnie, 9-0, and beat Roy-Hart's Matt Johnston, 5-4, in the finals.

Kellner, seeded first, pinned Holland's Don Silvia in a minute and Don Heppner in 2:34. In the finals, he lost to Clarence's Josh Feiler, 8-3.

Carbrey, seeded second, pinned Depew's Frank Kulney in 3:02 and defeated Kenmore West's Dominic Matteliano, 8-0. He lost to Matt Sanders of Section V Holley, 6-4, in the finals. Carbrey was down by three heading into the third period, tied it up at three with five seconds left but ran out of time.

DesSoye was pinned at 3:47 of the semifinals by Depew's Phil Tarbivo. He then shut out Roy-Hart's Morgan Fonzi, 5-0, and Kenmore West's Chris McIndoo, 4-0.

Caprow, seeded third, wrestled in by far the toughest weight class. In his weight class was Pembroke's Sam Damthongmivanh, who placed third at the New York State Tournament, Holley's Ken Ryan, the No. 2 ranked wrestler in Section V and Kenmore West's Nate Skiba, who went to states two years ago.

Caprow beat Frontier's Peter Lucido by technical fall, 23-8, was pinned by Ryan in 4:39, pinned Roy-Hart's Jordan Cudzillo in 4:27 and lost to Skiba, 11-0.

Aloisio did not place but wrestled well at 171, defeating Clarence's John Walter, 2-0, losing to top-seed Matt Agugliaro of Kenmore West, 6-5, and falling to Alden's Joe Barbuto by technical fall, 15-0.

"We had some tough wrestleback match-ups that we weren't able to win," said Swatland.

North finished with 88½ total points. Last year, they placed third.

North closes out its dual meets at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Orchard Park and at 6 p.m. Friday at Williamsville South. They return to action in the Class AAAA Tournament at Clarence Feb. 9-10.

e-mail: pnagy@beenews.com