Despite not earning any individual titles, the Liverpool wrestling team still rose to a second-place finish in Saturday’s Section III Division I championships at SRC Arena.
Cicero-North Syracuse also had a strong meet, claiming fourth place behind Baldwinsville, Liverpool and Fulton, but had the area’s lone champion – Joe Barber, who prevailed at 106 pounds.
Barber, a junior, entered the sectional meet with a 27-8 record and was the no. 2 seed. After beating Liverpool’s Sean Nadeau 13-3 and rolling past Central Square’ Jacob Garrow 8-1, Barber faced the top seed, Indian River’s Tucker Amato, in a tense final.
Trailing 1-0 in the third period, Barber tied it up, 1-1, when Amato was called for an illegal hold. It stayed that way until overtime, when Barber’s aggressive takedown produced the clinching points for a 3-1 victory, a sectional title and an automatic berth in the state tournament Feb. 27-March 1 at Albany’s Times Union Center.
Liverpool ended up with more points (134) than C-NS (127) because it had two wrestlers with runner-up finishes and four others prevail in consolation brackets.
Audey Ashkar, 37-4 this season, got close to the 113-pound title for the Warriors, pinning Stewart Phillips (New Hartford) and shutting out Stefan Colbert (Indian River) before his final with Andrew McFarland (Carthage), which would go to double overtime before McFarland pulled it out by the same 3-1 margin that Barber used to beat Amato.
As for Darren Breen (33-6), he could not capitalize on the top seed at 152 pounds. A hard-fought 6-3 semifinal win over Baldwinsville’s Steve Petrelli took a toll, for in the final against Petrelli’s teammate, Chad McArdell, Breen never got going and lost an 11-1 decision to McArdell.
C-NS had one other finalist – Jerrett Norton, the top seed at 160 pounds. Norton pinned Phoenix Webb (Central Square) in the third period and Brian Stapleton (Rome Free Academy) in 1:35, but in an active final against Fulton’s Travis Race, Norton could not hold on to an early 4-2 lead and lost, 12-8, falling to 32-5 on the season.
Liverpool’s conquest of the consolation brackets started when Pete Nash took third place at 120 pounds, rolling past Jeff Marraffa (Whitesboro) 12-4. At 126 pounds, Anthony Ianno beat Tyler Heggelke (West Genesee) 5-4 in overtime to get to the consolation bracket final, but still had enough to stop CBA/Jamesville-DeWitt’s Cole Murphy 3-1 to finish third.
The Warriors’ Mark Williamson rose to third place at 195 pounds by edging Caled Baluse (Whtiesboro) 1-0 and then using an overtime takedown to beat Kade Andrews (Carthage) 4-2. At 285 pounds, David Carnie met C-NS’s Jared West in the consolation bracket final and pinned West 20 seconds into the third period for his third-place effort.
C-NS saw Joe Copani get to third place at 138 pounds by recovering from his semifinal defeat to Sean McKenna (New Hartford) with a 4-0 shutout of Fulton’s Tim Holden and a 5-3 win over Watertown’s Desean Williams. Joe Mayers, at 113, gained fourth place behind Ashkar.
In another head-to-head bout, Liverpool’s Jerry Nash pinned C-NS’s Ray Sorensen in 2:14 for fifth place at 99 pounds. Nash’s teammate, Mike Mills, pinned Anthony Inman (Whitesboro) in the fifth-place bout at 132 pounds.
Ron Wilson, in the 220-pound division, beat C-NS’s Andres Anoceto 5-4 in the quarterfinals and in the semifinal pushed B’ville’s Joe Nasoni hard in a 4-1 defeat, eventually getting to fourth place as Anoceto gained sixth place.
The Northstars’ Robert Rein finished fifth, pinning Fulton’s Kyle Ware in 1:39 for that honor. Tom Petersen, who wrestled with Norton at 160, lost in the semifinals, but rebounded to finish fifth as he pinned Stapleton in 2:54 after Norton beat him earlier. Sam Ruiz finished sixth at 152, trailing Breen, while Anthony Carella lost in the opening round.
