Middle school wrestlers off to solid start

Photo courtesy of Robert Senn Photography

Photo

2009-10 AMS wrestling team

With enough students to support two teams, the Austintown Fitch Middle School “Red” and “Blue” wrestling teams remain two of the most consistent grappling squads in the area.

Coached by Don Kollar, a 30-year mat veteran in the system, and Arron Means, now in his eighth season as Kollar’s top assistant, varsity coach Brett Powell calls the middle school program the bridge between their youth and varsity programs.

“Don has been with the system longer than I have,” Powell said. “We field the product at the varsity level because of the efforts of our youth program and that of our middle school program.

“Don’s strength is administratively. He’s someone with tremendous organizational skills who doesn’t mind doing the proper paperwork that is necessary to make this program move forward.

“On the other hand, Arron [Means] loves teaching the technical aspect so you can see that they complement each other rather well,” Powell said.

The Red squad, a group that observers would consider the more advanced of the two squads, has done extremely well in tournament competition thus far while their Blue counterparts have left their mark in dual meet competition.

The Red unit finished fourth out of 16 teams at the recent Twinsburg Tourney while the Blue team placed fifth out of eight teams at the recent Massillon Jackson dual meet.

Pacing the Red squad thus far has been Cameron Reseporian (17-1) in the 150-lb. class; Tony Behanna (17-1) in the 160-lb. class; Luke Peterson (18-0) in the 122-lb. class and Jake Jameson (8-4), who wrestles as a lightweight.

Jameson is the brother of four-time state wrestling champion Tony Jameson, currently a freshman on The Ohio State University’s wrestling team and the winner of four state high school titles in four different weight classes — 103-lb., 119-lb., 135-lb. and 145-lb. the past four seasons.

The Blue squad is paced by Taylor Balog (14-4) who wrestles at 150-lbs. and Pat DiRienzo, who has compiled a .500 mark thus far and wrestles at 142-lbs.

Both teams will compete today in the 10-team A.M.S. Invitational at Austintown Fitch H.S. beginning at 8:30 a.m.

Other teams that are expected to compete include Solon, Ravenna Southeast, Hickory (PA), Poland, Hubbard, Brookfield, Streetsboro and Jackson-Milton.

The varsity squad awaits their hosting of the highly anticipated 30-team Josh Hepner Memorial Tournament, scheduled for the Falcon Gymnasium on Jan. 22-23.