BY MATT STOUT
As injuries mounted and numbers thinned, Pelham wrestling coach Derek Warshafsky said he was forced to get as much as he could out of each of his athletes.
Apparently, it was enough.
Despite carrying 13 wrestlers, the Pythons took sixth among 16 teams at the Division II championships on Saturday, Feb. 17, at Bow High School, fielding two individual champions and four qualifiers for the Meet of Champions on Saturday, Feb. 24.
Senior Mike D’Avanzo spent 2-minutes, 26 seconds on the mat among his three matches en route to three pins and the 152-pound title, while freshman Mike Perruccio claimed the 103-pound crown, defeating Souhegan’s Dylan Schulze for the third time this season; Saturday’s finals match ended in a 6-2 decision.
Senior D.J. Sweeney finished second in the 125-pound weight class, a year after placing third at 130 pounds, and junior 130-pounder Billy Sullivan took fourth after falling in overtime, 14-9, to John Stark’s Rob McCardell in the consolation finals.
Together, they helped accumulate 109 points, 2.5 short of fifth-place Bow, for Pelham’s seventh top-six finish in eight years. The two individual champions also tied for the most tournament champions from any team, including overall champion Hollis-Brookline, which finished with 182 points; second-place Plymouth, which had 155.5; and fourth-place White Mountains, which totaled 126.
“Having 13 guys by the end of the year, finishing 13-8 (in dual meets) and placing sixth at states as a team – you can’t ask for anything more,” Warshafsky said. “We squeezed this lemon, and we got something good out of it.”
The day was especially sweet for top-seeded D’Avanzo, who met an old foe in the finals in Hollis-Brookline’s Steve Murphy. More than two months prior, D’Avanzo tore a tendon in his right ankle while wrestling Murphy at the Big Red Tournament in Tyngsboro, Mass., on Dec. 16, and actually faced him again in his return on Jan. 17.
He earned some revenge in that match, a 14-6 victory, but it also showed D’Avanzo that he was “real sloppy and out of shape” from his time off.
“I knew then I needed to get in shape if I was that close to him,” he said.
Saturday, it wasn’t even close. D’Avanzo, now 18-3, took control from the start, hitting his first shot before pinning Murphy in 52 seconds. It was the quickest finals victory of the day.
Perruccio, who moved down from 112 pounds in late December, was nearly as dominant as the No. 1 seed, earning a pin in the quarterfinals in 45 seconds and a 13-0 major decision in the semifinals. In the championship, he never trailed, opening up a 2-0 lead with a takedown in the first period before pulling away in the third.
“I just wanted to wrestle tough, and see what happens,” he said.
Perruccio’s title marked the third time since 2000 that Pelham boasted a champion in the lightest weight class, and, with D’Avanzo’s championship, was the third time under Warshafsky the Pythons produced multiple state champions.
Pelham did this without one of its top wrestlers, sophomore Bruce Vieira, who was sidelined nearly the entire year with a broken collar bone.
“We forfeited three weight classes pretty much the whole year, and we went out and beat good teams like Londonderry, so to do that without a full lineup, it shows how tough everyone on the team wrestled,” D’Avanzo said. “We really came together at the end of the year.”
Pelham’s Roger Allen, at 112 pounds; R.J. Riddinger at 140; Phil McColgan, at 145; Billy Rines, at 160; and Rob LaRose, at 215, all recorded at least one victory in the tournament, with Rines leading the pack with a 2-2 record and berth in the consolation semifinals.
There, the sophomore fell in the second period to second-seeded and eventual third-place finisher Jack Hamilton of Franklin.