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Falcons soar in Hephner Memorial Tournament
By Charles grove
austintown
As tournament hosts, it was their tournament to win as far as the Fitch High School wrestling team was concerned — and they did just that.
The Falcons won the 2016 Josh Hephner Memorial Invitational Tournament by a fairly comfortable margin, beating out second place Southeast, 319-245.
For first-year Fitch head coach John Burd, Saturday’s victory was about more than just the 13 wrestlers who placed between his A and B teams.
“We have so many good wrestlers, it creates a good problem in that there’s a lot of competition between the team,” Burd said. “They really seem to rally around one another to get each other better.”
The Falcons won two out of the three championship finals they were in. Freshman Gus Sutton won the 106-pound class while Kyle Varga took home the crown in the 160-pound class. In the 132-pound division, Andrew Fairbanks lost to Willoughby South’s Isaac Hendershot. Matt Rood came in third in the 285-pound division.
Sutton’s match was the first of the finals on Saturday night and Burd said it was especially important to get his team off to a good start.
“Gus really set the tone coming in as a freshman and winning the first tournament,” Burd said. “It’s the first time he’s ever been here and he wrestled really well this weekend to get us going.”
Varga’s win against Massillon Jackson’s Braxton Freeman was especially nice for him since he had just won the spot on Fitch’s A team back from teammate Michael Ferree, who placed seventh in the 160-pound division.
“I had already wrestled [Freeman] two times this year and I beat him both times,” Varga said. “I was confident but I knew he was coming after me too.”
Despite coming in 17th out of 29 teams overall, Poland y had a strong showing in the finals as well as Dante Ginnetti won the championship in the 120-pound division, Trey Ellis finished third in the 220-pound division, David Esarco finished fourth in the 145-pound division and Anthony Audi finished fifth in the 170-pound division.
Ginnetti said the victory was especially nice for him after taking his lumps at the Top Gun Tournament in Alliance the week before.
“It feels good to come back after a tough weekend at Top Gun and take first here,” Ginnetti said.
Despite last week’s setback, finishing fourth in his weight class, Ginnetti had no shortage of confidence against Girard’s Dakota McCloskey in the finals.
“My Dad told me after my semifinal match, ‘Don’t underestimate Dakota,’ but I said, ‘I’m going to beat him.’ That’s just my mindset,” Ginnetti said.
Towards the end of the tournament Poland got another nice finish when Ellis claimed third place in the 200-pound division. Ellis said he was happy to go out on a win, but wasn’t satisfied since he didn’t take home the championship.
“It’s good to go out with a win but I’d much rather be standing on top of the podium. I don’t like losing,” Ellis said.
Ellis won his third-place match 7-2 when he pulled away in the final period after Ravenna’s Nathan Pritchett pulled within a single point.
“I just stayed in good position,” Ellis said. “I knew I couldn’t be happy with a one point win. I didn’t want to give him any room to breathe.
“I wrestled him once my sophomore year and beat him 15-0. I knew what he liked to do so I knew what to watch out for. He lived and died on one move so I had him scouted out pretty well.”