State College wrestling’s early lead not enough in narrow loss to Shikellamy
Take a look at these stats: win 7 of 13 bouts, collect six bonus-point victories in those seven wins, hold an early 15-point lead and have a 19-8 takedown advantage.
The team with those stats should win the wrestling match, right?
Well, State College had all of those in its dual with Shikellamy on Wednesday night, but suffered a 36-35 loss.
“It’s tough. Any time you lose by one, it’s not easy,” Little Lions coach Ryan Cummins said. “We are leaving points out there that we should be getting. We are getting wins instead of majors and techs instead of falls. They add up. We have to have that conversation that scoring as many points as you can, and not leaving it up to anybody. You get a pin, six is better than five, and so on.”
State College’s Pierson Manville and Asher Cunningham racked up back-to-back technical falls to open the second half of the dual and give the Little Lions a 31-18 lead with four bouts to go.
Manville collected six takedowns in a 21-4 rout of CJ Keener at 145 pounds in 5:02 of wrestling. Cunningham had no problems with Cole Wetzel, tallying a 15-0 victory in 3:54.
However, State College dropped three of last four bouts — all by pins, which gave the Braves a rallying victory in their first dual of the season.
Shikellamy’s other three bout victories were also falls, which tallied up to those 36 points.
“I think our guys, need to not get pinned,” senior Hayden Cunningham said. “Ultimately, it’s fighting off our backs, and doing what you can do to help the team.”
Cunningham was hitting the mat again competitively for the first time in a home dual in two years, as he was recovering from injuries his sophomore and junior seasons. He was one of three Little Lions wrestlers to secure bonus points in the first half of the dual.
Nick Pavlechko got this started off with a fall in 1:25 at 285 pounds. Pavlechko was followed up by freshman Izaiah Vasquez, who came up a point shy of a major decision in a 10-3 win at 107 pounds.
Sophomore Nicholas Berrena kept the train rolling for State College by sticking Jewllius Morales in 1:41 to give his team a 15-0 lead after three bouts.
After Shikellamy picked up two falls, Cunningham stepped on the mat and went to work. He quickly got a takedown six seconds into his 133-pound bout with Daniel Hernandez.
Hernandez escaped, but Cunningham took him down again and collected a pin in 53 seconds.
“It feels really good. It definitely sucked having to do all of that rehab,” Cunningham said, “But keeping this in mind, it’s definitely worth it. The feeling you get after wrestling these matches.”
The Braves got another pin to get within 21-18 at the break, which led to the rest of the dual taking shape.
The Cunningham brothers, Manville and Pavlechko are expected to do a lot for the Little Lions this year. Cummins had high praise of those four plus the young guys in Vasquez and Berrena.
However, he was still not happy with how good the night started and how poorly it finished.
“It’s absolutely disappointing, losing any match is a disappointment. I wrote down a lot of notes for mistakes we are making,” Cummins said. “We are making a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t be making. We got a lot of work to do. Starting 0-3 is certainly not what we want. We’ve got some improvements to make, and we’re going to make them. We are going to bounce back.”
Shikellamy 36, State College 35
Wednesday at State College
285: Nick Pavlechko, SC, pinned Lucas Wetzel, 1:25
107: Izaiah Vasquez, SC, dec. Max Hallman, 10-3
114: Nicholas Berrena, SC, pinned Jewllius Morales, 1:41
121: Alex Reed, S, pinned Johnathan Coates, 1:07
127: Eben Kisner, S, pinned Thomas Hill, 5:48
133: Hayden Cunningham, SC, pinned Daniel Hernandez, :53
139: Isaac McGreggor, S, pinned Jacob Campbell, 1:59
145: Pierson Manville, SC, tech. fall CJ Keener, 21-4 (5:02)
152: Asher Cunningham, SC, tech. fall Cole Wetzel, 15-0 (3:54)
160: Connor Wetzel, S, pinned Isaac Mellott, 1:19
172: Carter Weaverling, SC, major dec. Matt Shaffer, 9-1
189: Brody Rebuck, S, pinned Adam Bell, :40
215: Mason Rebuck, S, pinned Khalil Rager, 1:16
Takedowns: S 8, SC 19
Records: Shikellamy (1-0), State College (0-3)
Next match: Central Dauphin at State College, 6:30 p.m.
This story was originally published December 7, 2022 at 10:40 PM.
