WEST NORRITON ->>The old sports adage reads, “A loss is only good if you learn something from it.”
Way back on December 16, the Plymouth Whitemarsh wrestling team lost a dual meet to Norristown on criteria. The Colonials and Eagles finished tied at 39 on the scoreboard, but Norristown emerged victorious thanks to the criteria of most first points scored.
And the Colonials learned that every point, every match, every score is important.
And Saturday, they returned the favor.
The Colonials claimed four individual titles and slipped past Norristown to win the Suburban One League American Conference team competition in the opening weekend of the all-important wrestling postseason.
PW accumulated 215 team points, six better than Norristown, to cart home the team trophy.
And head coach Justin Giovinco knew just where his wrestlers’ motivation came from.
“Since that loss, we’d had this date circled on the calendar,” Giovinco said. “This was all we really had to salvage.
“And it’s easier to get motivated when you’re not the favorite.”
Norristown, the American Conference champs, came in as the favorite and carried a seven-point lead into the tourney’s final round.
But while the Eagles went 2-4 in the finals, PW went 4-1, including an upset by Zach Fisher over favored Talib Davis of Upper Dublin in the 126-pound final.
PW also went 2-0 in head-to-head finals matchups with Norristown.
It resulted in an upset that, while not quite of mammoth proportions, was good enough for a wilder-than-normal celebration.
“All we needed was for one result to be reversed, and we would have won,” said Norristown head coach Mark Harner.
But PW would have none of it.
It began when PW’s Marco DiBattista outlasted Norristown’s Justin Altrogge in the 106-pound finals.
And the fuse was lit.
The Colonials would win out in the finals, save for a victory in the 145-pound finals by Cheltenham’s August Gershwin over PW’s Ben Billings. It took a literal last-second takedown for Gershwin to pull it off, and the match, a 9-8 victory – easily the best of the day – earned Gershwin the Outstanding Wrestler award.
But the Colonials were far from done.
Along with DiBattista’s win at 106 and the upset victory by Fisher in the 126 finals, PW got titles from Tommy DiSisto at 170 and Quincy Williams at heavyweight.
Meanwhile, the Eagles lost in the 106, 113, 152 and 170-pound finales.
Only Eric Fuentes (132) and Rich Maggio (160) would claim individual titles for the Eagles.
Elsewhere, the spoils were pretty well spread around.
The most anticipated match came at 106, where DiBattista shook off a first-period takedown and used a reversal and back points in the second period to pull out a 5-2.
DiBattista and Altrogge, two of the district’s better 106-pounders, had not met when the Eagles and Colonials squared off in December. DiBattista came away disappointed, feeling he could have been the difference if he had wrestled Altrogge.
This time he got his chance, and didn’t waste it. He was down, 2-0, early in the match. But an escape got him on the board late in the opening period. And the four-point move in the second cemented the victory.
“The important thing was keeping calm,” DiBattista said of his early deficit. “I knew that I could get out from bottom. But if I get mad, it’s easy to lose focus.”
What followed were a pair of victories by the Amy brothers of Upper Moreland, with Jason winning at 113 and Matt prevailing at 120 over Upper Merion freshman Zach DiSanto.
The Fisher upset followed at 126 and Norristown’s Fuentes earned the Eagles first title at 132.
Upper Dublin’s Colin Devlin (138) repeated his dual-meet success over Wissahickon’s Nick Senderling when he pinned the Trojans middleweight in the third period.
Next up was Gershwin, who got behind, 4-2 after two periods, then mounted a comeback that only came to fruition when he got a takedown just as the third-period buzzer went off.
“I knew time was winding down,” the champ said. “I didn’t know it was that close (to time expiring), but all I heard was my coach (Kirk Stehman). He knows how to motivate me, and I just do what he says.”
Ultimately, Upper Moreland claimed three individual titles, with Patrick Walker (195) joining the aforementioned Amy brothers on top of the podium.
Upper Dublin got individual titles from Devlin (138) and freshman Mason Novak (152), while Upper Merion’s Noah Stribny won at 220 and James Guckin (182) became only the second wrestler from Springfield to land a conference championship.
