Here are Centre County’s high school wrestling leaders through Jan. 19

In less than a month, Centre County’s Class 2A wrestlers will be heading to Altoona for the District 6 individual championships.

This means there aren’t too many more duals, or tournaments for that matter, left in the regular season. Over the past week, county teams went 5-4.

State College picked up an 18-point win over Central Mountain on Tuesday. Penns Valley eked out a 37-36 victory over Mifflinburg, and Bellefonte beat up on District 6 Class 2A power Huntingdon 57-13 on Thursday.

Bald Eagle Area and Philipsburg-Osceola each picked up a win over Mountain League foes in Tyrone and Central, respectively. St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy hit the road for the New Oxford Tournament near Gettysburg on Friday.

Here’s a look at this week’s leaders:

Wins

The Wolves’ Caleb Dowling and Tyler Stoltzfus went a perfect 4-0 to claim the 152- and 170-pound title, respectively, at the New Oxford Tournament. The duo each have 27 wins to stay in the lead for the county.

Stoltzfus has yet to lose a match and that’s after wrestling in highly competitive tournaments such as the Ironman and Powerade. All of Dowling and Stoltzfus’ wins this week came with bonus points, but those will be discussed later.

Bellefonte has a trio of wrestlers in Alex Coppolo, Ethan Richner and Jude Swisher tied for third with 24. However, they aren’t alone.

The Red Raiders only had one dual this week, but State College had three and that gave freshman Hayden Cunningham the opportunity to climb the ranks again. Cunningham had a perfect week, going 3-0.

Cunningham’s teammate Lance Urbas also had a perfect week on the mat to climb to 23 wins on the season. The Little Lions have a third wrestler in the top 10 with Owen Woolcott, who amassed three wins this week. He is up to 22 on the year and collected his 20th this week.

Woolcott wasn’t the only county wrestler to get their 20th win of the season this week. There are now 16 wrestlers who have 20-plus win so far with a couple just shy of 20. Here’s who joined Woolcott this week:

Bald Eagle Area: Gage McClenahan (21 wins) and Cooper Gilham (20) each pinned their opponents. McClenahan got his first by taking care of Tyrone’s Dominick Maloney fall in 1:02 on Tuesday. Gilham stuck over Central Mountain’s Clayton Foster in 2:53 on Thursday.

St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy: Keegan Rothrock (21), Amonn Ohl (20) and Zack Witmer (20) all earned No. 20 at some point during the New Oxford Tournament, giving the Wolves five wrestlers with 20-plus wins. Rothrock pinned Line Mountain’s Riley Heim in 2:10 to reach the 160 pound finals, which he eventually won the title. Witmer earned a 6-4 win over Biglerville’s Blake Showers to win the 138 pound title for No. 20. Ohl finished fifth at 132 pounds and the 8-0 win over Middletown’s Luke Fegley, who was 26-2 at the time, was No. 20 for the junior.

State College: Woolcott used a 16-0 technical fall over Chambersburg’s Anthony Colangelo on Monday for win No. 20. It also occurred during the Little Lions’ Senior Night, which Woolcott is in his final high school season.

Pins

The leader didn’t change this week in Bellefonte’s Ethan Richner; however, Penns Valley’s Malachi DuVall closed the gap.

DuVall, who raced out of the gates with 11 of his first 12 wins being pins, has 16 now for the season after collecting two more this week. The junior is one behind Richner.

DuVall dispatched Clearfield’s Logan Firanski in 1:30 on Tuesday. On Thursday, the Rams’ wrestler took just 1:24 to top Mifflinburg’s Dominic Sampsell.

Sitting two pins behind DuVall is McClenahan. The Eagles’ senior wrestled just shy of two minutes in his wins over Tyrone’s Dominick Maloney and Central Mountain’s Ashton Smith.

Remember how Stoltzfus had nothing but bonus-point wins? They were all pins, giving him 13 on the year and tying him for fifth with teammates Ohl and Rothrock, Bellefonte’s Aidan O’Shea and Cunningham.

Ohl, who has led the county the past two seasons, is looking like he’s trying to reclaim that throne after getting a late start to the season. He collected three falls Friday as did Rothrock to reach the 160 pound finals. Rothrock, who is committed to wrestle at Brown in college, wrestled just over three minutes to reach the finals.

Here’s who earned their 10th falls of the season:

Bellefonte: Tyler Benner (10 pins) opened the Red Raiders’ dual by sticking Huntingdon’s Gage Peters in 2:55.

St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy: Stoltzfus received pin No. 10 by topping Parkland’s Alex Neely in 1:20 in the second round.

State College: Urbas (10) stuck Cumberland Valley’s Gabriel Hayes in 3:11 on Thursday.

Technical Falls

There is a new leader this week in Dowling. He dominated his way to the 152 pound title at New Oxford collecting four technical fall victories.

The West Virginia commit now has nine tech falls this season. He had a total of four points scored against him, all of which came in the second round and quarterfinals. That’s right, Dowling didn’t have a single point scored against him in the semifinals or finals and the final scoring margin for the tournament was 65-4.

Penns Valley’s Clayton Royer, who has been near the top of this category all season, is two behind Dowling. Royer was only able to get one this week over Clearfield’s Peyton Smay 16-0 in 2:20 on Tuesday.

Witmer made a leap up the leaderboard by collecting two more technical falls and now has five this year. The junior’s first came in the second round and the other propelled him into the finals. Witmer outscored his opponents 33-2.

Richner was able to secure his fourth technical fall of the season to break away from a pack of wrestlers that have three. He topped Huntingdon’s Briar Deline 15-0 in 4:54 on Tuesday.

Richner’s teammate Ethan Rossman and Woolcott joined the pack for wrestlers with three technical falls this week by picking up one a piece. Rossman beat the Bearcats’ Zack Peck 24-7 in 4:52 as Woolcott had the 16-0 win over Colangelo.

Major decisions and Fastest falls

There weren’t too many changes in these categories this past week.

Ohl became the leader in the fastest falls category. He pinned Line Mountain’s Lane Schadel in five seconds to open his New Oxford Tournament run.

Ohl now has three quick times on the board as the Wolves have eight of the top 10 times.

State College’s Clayton Leidy, who is committed to wrestling at Alvernia University, broke away from a group of wrestlers with two major decisions to join a smaller group with three. Leidy beat Central Mountain’s Kaden Falls 11-2 on Tuesday for No. 3.

Woolcott and the Mounties’ Gabe Dunkelberger each joined that big group of wrestlers with two major decisions on Thursday. Woolcott beat Cumberland Valley’s Spenser Machemer 12-4. Dunkelberger defeated Central’s Luke Knisley 13-2.

Wins

Falls

Fastest Fall

Technical Falls

Major Decisions

This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 8:00 AM.

Nate Cobler

Centre Daily Times

814-231-4609

Nate Cobler is a part-time reporter covering all things wrestling, either Penn State or Centre County’s high schools, for the Centre Daily Times. He’ll also cover other sports too. When he isn’t writing about sports, he is working for a local mortgage broker, Providence Mortgage Group.