Here are the Centre County high school wrestling leaders through March 5

All of the regional tournaments are now complete for the entire high school wrestling season, which means only one tournament remains.

Thirteen Centre County wrestlers punched their tickets to the PIAA Championships slated to begin on Thursday at the Giant Center in Hershey.

All five of the county schools will be represented and State College will have the most qualifiers with five in Hayden Cunningham (127 pounds), Pierson Manville (139), Asher Cunningham (145), Carter Weaverling (172) and Nick Pavlechko (285). Bald Eagle Area and Penns Valley have three a piece.

The Eagles have Lucas Fye (121), Coen Bainey (127) and Caleb Close (172) with Colten Shunk (133), Ty Watson (152) and Kollin Brungart (215) representing the Rams. Bellefonte’s Gage Long (145) and Philipsburg-Osceola’s Caleb Hummel (107) join the group, too.

Over the past two weeks, eight of those 13 wrestlers claimed regional titles. All five of the Little Lions won with Fye, Close and Watson getting their crowns.

Here’s a look at the leaderboards with the PIAA Championships the only item left for this season:

Wins

Close remains the leader of the pack on this list.

He claimed four victories on his way to collecting his PIAA Southwest Regional title — the first of his career. The sophomore is one win away from 40.

Long sits in second after climbing to 37 wins on the year. He had four wins as well, but most of those wins came in the consolation bracket as he had to battle his way back to a fifth-place finish.

There is a logjam in third place with Bainey, Watson and Hummel all getting to 36 victories on the year. Watson had the highest finish of the trio in the regional tournament as he claimed four wins to get his second straight crown.

Bainey had four victories as well, but he came home with a third-place finish. Hummel had three wins, and all of his wins came in the consolation bracket. He dropped his first match, but responded by working his way to a sixth-place finish.

Several wrestlers were able to get to 30-plus wins over the past two weeks. All of those wrestlers are on the leaderboard, but here’s who got No. 30:

Penns Valley: Jack Darlington (32 wins) topped Beth Center’s Mason Wright, 8-0, in their second round match; Brungart (31) defeated West Greene’s Colin Whyte, 7-1, in their consolation third round bout; Shunk (31) made the semifinals by topping Chestnut Ridge’s Mason Weyant, 5-1.

Philipsburg-Osceola: Nate Fleck (31) pinned Central Valley’s Don Lindsey in 2:57 of their second round match.

There are several more that are nearing 30-plus wins on the season that will get that opportunity this week in Fye, Pavlechko, Manville and Hayden Cunningham.

Manville garnered a monumental win during the PIAA Northwest Regional Championships. The junior collected his 200th career victory when he pinned Cathedral Prep’s Brandon Byrd in 1:41 of their semifinals match.

Weaverling became the 29th wrestler in the county to get to 20-plus wins on the season too. He has 22 victories, but his 20th was a pin of Meadville’s Ty Tidball in 1:03 of their quarterfinals match of the regional tournament.

Pins

Long stayed at the top of this category as he was able to secure one pin in the regional tournament, which got him to 27 on the year.

However, he has some company in Bainey. The Eagles senior added two falls to his pin total to also get to 27 on the year.

The American commit flattened Frazier’s Tyler Clark in 25 seconds to make the semifinals. After being dropped into the consolation bracket, Bainey stuck Montour’s Anthony Orlandini in 2:03 to make the consolation finals.

Pavlechko is lurking behind the leaders with 25 falls. He pinned his way to his second straight regional crown.

All of those falls came in the first period. His fastest was 1:22 over Selinsgrove’s Jack Peters in the semifinals.

Brungart became just the fifth county wrestler to get to 20-plus pins on the year. He has exactly 20, with that victory coming over Central Cambria’s Karter Quick in 1:19. The fall secured Brungart’s first trip to Hershey.

BEA’s Cameron Dubbs became the 29th county wrestler to get to 10-plus falls on the season. He stuck Jefferson Morgan’s Adam Mcanany in 4:01 of their consolation third round match to get No. 10.

Major Decisions

As the postseason continues to progress, it’s becoming harder to score bonus points. These past two weeks saw a handful of guys collect major decisions.

Fye had two during his title run in the regional tournament. He used back-to-back major decisions to make the finals.

He topped Penns Valley’s Brayden Lisowski, 8-0, in their quarterfinals match. Then, Fye shutout McGuffey’s Lucas Barr, 10-0, in the semifinals.

Fye now has seven major decisions, which has him tied for the county lead with Fleck.

Darlington climbed into a four-way tie for third in the county with five major decisions. He blanked Beth Center’s Mason Wright, 8-0, in the second round.

Hayden Cunningham and the Mounties’ Marcus Gable also secured a major decision to climb up the leaderboard. They each have four on the year to be tied with four others for seventh in the county.

Cunningham racked up an 11-3 win over Cathedral Prep’s Sammy Staab in the finals of the Northwest Regional tournament. Gable shutout Indiana’s Will Turner, 9-0, in their consolation third round match.

Technical Falls & Fastest Falls

Only two wrestlers secured a technical fall this late in the year — Hummel and Bainey.

Hummel racked up an 18-1 defeat of Tussey Mountain’s Dakota Santamaria in 4:41 of their consolation third round match. It was Hummel’s fifth technical fall, which has him tied for the county lead with Bellefonte’s Noah Weaver.

Bainey blanked Somerset’s Deshonn Valentine, 15-0 in 2:06 of their second round bout. It was Bainey’s third technical fall, which is tied with Hayden Cunningham for fifth most in the county.

There were no new times added to the fastest falls list.

Leaders

Wins

Pins

Fastest Falls

Technical Falls

Major Decisions

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.