Steinert’s Nick Pasqua pins Nottingham’s Brandon Leonard in the 195lb matchup. Photo by Amanda “The Homeowner” Ruch. https://amandaruchphotography.smugmug.com/
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Jan. 26: The final score of Nottingham’s 45-13 wrestling win over Steinert pretty much reflected each coach’s goals for their teams at Saturday’s Mercer County Tournament.
“I’m hoping to get three or four guys in the finals,” said Swamprats coach Jason “The Rock” Marasco, whose team improved to 14-6. “I pretty much expect almost every single kid to be in the top five. I expect every weight class to at least get a medal, but I told them ‘I don’t want you to get sixth. If you get to that fifth-sixth match you better get fifth or I’m not gonna be happy.’ That’s what the team goal is.”
Steinert coach Adam “The Postmaster General” Jankos had a slightly different outlook.
“We have a whole team of guys who can get fourth, fifth or sixth,” said the PMG after the Spartans dropped to 9-6. “Everybody will try to get into a round where they can get a medal. I think that’s possible for this team. No one will be a number one or two seed, they’re in that four or five range.”
Marasco feels if Devion Stokes, Pat White, Jon Jacobs and Greg Daloisio wrestle to their potential, each can get to the finals and possibly on top of the podium. Daloisio sat out tonight to heal up, Stokes and White won close decisions while Jacobs pinned Jordan Goodarz early in the third period.
“Jon Jacobs, on any given day the kid wrestles like he’s great and on other days he needs to fine tune,” Marasco said. “All those guys have a shot. We’ve got to get past some of those tougher guys though.”
That was what Jankos felt had to happen for his team against the Northstars – upset some of the their tougher guys. But the Spartans could only get a pin from Nick Pasqua and decisions from Myles Constabile and Dan Conti.
Based on what he saw earlier this year, The General felt his team could spring some upsets. Based on what he saw tonight, he felt a little differently.
“I saw them in like, the season’s second match and they have improved a lot from there,” Jankos noted. “They wrestled good, they wrestled tough. Some of their kids have nine losses but I look at their schedule and they’ve got a lot of tough schools on there. I was impressed. I saw more tonight than I thought they had.”
Nottingham got pins from Rommy Abouella, Henry Desinor and Sylvester Freeman, while Jerry Andaluz, Dan Dempsey and James Duff won decisions.
“I was really impressed with some of the guys that stepped in,” Marasco said. “Sudesh Gurung stepped in at 120 for Tariq (Morton), because we’re trying to rest him for counties, and Sudesh wrestled well. Henry stepped in there for Pete (Glazewski) because I wanted to rest Pete a little bit and Henry goes in there and gets a win.”
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The coach’s biggest praise was saved for Andaluz, who defeated one of Steinert’s more solid wrestlers in Keon Cooper. Jankos actually bumped Cooper down to give the Spartans a better chance at 60, and felt the weight loss may have hurt his 170-pounder.
Nonetheless, Andaluz’s effort was to be commended.
“We work on certain moves before matches,” said Jerry, who improved to 10-10. “I was gonna try to hit one, but I couldn’t hit it the way he was spacing up. So I just tried to take him down, and then I tried to ride him, and I tried to work the Michigan series.
“Certain days I feel it, certain days I want to put legs in. It’s all about how you feel on a certain day or before the match what you’re feeling. I have my plan when I go into the match but sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them so you try to rely on everything else you have when you go out there.”
Marasco is hoping a number of close losses to quality competition will pay off for Andaluz in the counties.
“I’m looking forward to MCTs,” Andaluz said. “I know I had real close matches, I know these are going to be very good matches and I know I’ve improved a lot. I can rely on my training and workouts with Marasco. I just go out there and wrestle whoever I have to and go out and make my coaches proud.”
Stars holding Alumni Night
On Monday, Jan. 30 Nottingham is holding an Alumni Night at its Ewing match. JV matches start at 4:45 and all former Swamprats are admitted free until 4:00.
