Wrestling: Four Lower Hudson Valley wrestlers place at 2023 Eastern States Classic
LOCH SHELDRAKE - If you can make it at the Eastern States Classic, you can make it anywhere.
Wrestlers that are used to dominating their neighbors or other local talent get put through a challenging gauntlet, where hardly any match is a guarantee. With some of the best wrestlers from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia in attendance, it's a great measuring stick for grapplers to see where they truly stand at a state and regional-level.
Four Lower Hudson Valley wrestlers got to reaffirm their status among the state's best, landing a spot on the podium, but all 70-plus local competing wrestlers walked away with lessons learned and added motivation to intensify their training for the second half of the season.
Ketcham senior Matt Masch led the way with a fifth-place showing at 145 pounds.
"I think it's pretty cool (to be the top finisher in Section 1), but I think I could have done better and I think a lot of other guys could have done better too," Masch said. "There's just tons to work on still."
Live results: 2023 Eastern States Classic round-by-round wrestling results
Three other local wrestlers joined Masch on the podium, with Nyack's Sam Szerlip (172 pounds) and Iona Prep's Sean Degl (160 pounds) both finishing in sixth, and Fox Lane's Alex Berisha (189 pounds) taking seventh.
Masch and Szerlip were the only two local wrestlers to reach the semifinals in the main bracket. Masch earned a 8-6 decision win over Bethpage's Will McMullen in the quarterfinals to begin the day, while Szerlip scored a quick first-period pin of Wantagh's Noah Corwin.
Consecutive losses though in the main-bracket semifinals and the consolation semifinals dropped them into the fifth-place matches.
Masch got to end his weekend on a high note, persisting past the No. 1 state-ranked Division II 145-pounder, Owen Hicks of Fonda-Johnstown in a narrow 8-7 victory for fifth place.
"It definitely was close, got hit with some things," Masch said. "He saw my mistakes in my game and capitalized, so I got turned on my back once or twice, but I just kept saying myself to keep going, you can't quit now."
Szerlip and Degl opted to forfeit and take sixth. As for Berisha, he got knocked out of the quarterfinals after taking a late pin, his first loss of the season, to Pine Bush's Braydon Pennell.
After an up-and-down time in the consolation bracket, he found his way to the seventh-place match, where he also got to end his weekend with a win. He dominated Ward Melville's Josh Rettig with a 9-1 major decision win.
"I felt pretty good, but coming in seventh, that wasn't my goal ultimately," Berisha said. "I feel like I should have placed and I should have wrestled better to place higher."
Regardless of result, the lessons learned and getting a gauge for competing against top-tier talent seems to be the most valuable, as they try to gear up for a run to a sectional title and go far in states at the end of the season.
"Proved to myself I'm still one of the top guys, but I know what I need to improve on to make myself even higher up," Berisha said. "It was very helpful to face a lot of kids I could face at states, it gets me an estimate and what I need to improve on.
"I also learned no matter what or who you're wrestling, you have to wrestle all the way. In my quarterfinals match, I kind of laid back a little bit and that kind of messed me up. Just keep on wrestling as hard as you can the whole way through."
Masch echoed that statement, feeling reflective and ready to tackle the second half of the season.
"My cardio can be better and I have to drill like there's no tomorrow," Masch said. "There really isn't another season for me, unless I wrestle in college, but this is my last high school season so last divisionals, sectionals and states. I just need to double down to fix every single mistake and work even harder in all positions."
Eleven others from the Lower Hudson Valley also advanced to the second day of the Eastern States Classic, but only four just missed a podium spot and fell in the blood round: 118-pounders Joe Ramirez (Mahopac) and Joe Tornambe (Yorktown), as well as 110-pounder Logan Alexander (Stepinac) and 172-pounder Leo Venables (Carmel).
Follow Eugene Rapay on Twitter at @erapay5 and on Instagram at @byeugenerapay.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Wrestling: Four Lower Hudson Valley wrestlers place at Eastern States
