Survival on the mats
Win or go home? Not quite.
Place among the top six in your weight class or your season is over. That’s the challenge facing Butler, Seneca Valley and Mars wrestlers at Saturday’s WPIAL AAA Northern Sectional at North Allegheny High School.
“Things have been shuffled around a bit this year,” Butler coach Scott Stoner said. “A lot of teams dropped down to Class 2A this season. There’s onlty 38 3A schools, so they divided the six sections into three sectional tournaments.
“We’ve seen some kids from these other schools (Plum, Kiski Area, Fox Chapel, Shaler, Central Catholic and Armstrong) in some tournaments, but we haven’t seen all of them. In some cases, you’re not sure what you’re up against.”
The top six placers in each weight class advance to next weekend’s WPIAL Championships at North Allegheny High School.
“There used to be 11 teams in our section,” Seneca Valley coach Kevin Wildrick said. “That’s all changed. Tournaments like this are the reason we wrestle the high-caliber schedule we do.
“You want your kids to be mentally and physically prepared to battle through this. Hopefully, our schedule adequately prepared them that way.”
Butler has 11 wrestlers in the Northern Sectional. Only one of them — Dawson Davis (7-22) at 152 — isn’t seeded among the top six in his respective weight class. Santino Sloboda (31-0) at 107 pounds, Kase Chopp (29-6) at 139 and Levi Donnel (30-3) at 160 are all seeded No. 1 for the Golden Tornado. Mickey Kreinbucher (25-6) is seeded second at 189.
“Santino is ranked No. 1 in the WPIAL, but the Plum kid (freshman Owen Campbell) is ranked No. 3,” Stoner said. “The No. 2 kid is from Canon McMillan. We considered bumping Chase up to 145, but that’s really not his weight. We did’t expect the North Allegheny kid (senior Nathan Bonaparte) to bump up from 133, but he did.
“We expect Levi to get through everybody, but there are kids in that weight division who are capable of beating him if he doesn’t wrestle well. That’s how wrestling at this time of year is.”
Seneca Valley has a pair of top-seeded wrestlers in Connor Smith (23-6) at 114 and Tyler Chappell (24-5) at 127. Zach Hill is No. 2 at 133 and Jacob Eubanks No.6 at 152, but no other Raider wrestler is seeded better than seventh.
“The seeding is always fair and it’s fair this year,” Wildrick said. “But I’m still confident we can get a lot of kids through. We’re pretty battle-tested.”
Mars has no wrestler seeded among the top six. Rocco Darocy is seeded seventh for the Planets at 139 pounds, Liam Hein and Adam Budzilek eighth at 145 and 285, respectively.
Wrestling begins at 9:30 a.m. A 30-minute break will be taken before the beginning of the finals and consolation finals.
Here are the wrestlers who will be competing for Butler, Seneca Valley and Mars at the Northern Sectional, with their wuight class, seeding and won-loss record:
107-Santino Sloboda (1) 31-0, 121-Kelly Schaukowitsch (4) 24-11, 127-Leo Iarrapino (6), 12-14, 133-Gavin Rush (5) 20-11, 139-Kase Chopp (1) 29-6, 152-Dawson Davis (9) 7-22, 160-Levi Donnel (1) 30-3, 172-Matt Zinkhann (3) 26-9, 189-Mickey Kreinbucher (2) 25-6), 215-Landon Christie (3) 20-11, 285-Ethan Babay (3) 28-8
107-Vincent Garrastazu (10) 5-5, 114-Connor Smith (1) 23-6, 121-Jack Tofanelli (7) 11-13), 127-Tyler Chappell (1) 24-5, 133-Zach Hill (2) 17-9, 139-Angel Kristo (10) 2-7, 152-Jacob Eubanks (6) 13-14, 160-Corey Wolfe (7) 10-14, 172-John Mallery (9) 9-17, Thomas Wuycheck (10) 11-14, 285-Roman Royal (7) 11-11
114-Marco Moran (9) 4-7, 133-Brandon Frantz (11) 3-7, 139-Rocco Darocy (7) 12-9, 145-Liam Hein (8) 9-6, 152-Joseph Zottola (11) 5-11, 160-Cooper Courson (9) 10-16, 285-Adam Budzilek (8) 9-10
