Wrestling: Finally healthy, Chichester wins one for coach Jim Beletti
UPPER CHICHESTER — Chichester wrestling coach Jim Beletti and assistant coach Marty Scarpato will be sporting new hair color sometime in the near future.
That’s the deal Beletti and Scarpato made with the team if the Eagles knocked off Interboro to win the Del Val League title. Beletti and Scarpato agreed to dye their hair if Chi won the Wednesday night match, which indeed went the Eagles’ way, 37-29 over the Bucs at Bob Nugent Gymnasium. It is Chi’s fifth league title in the last eight years.
Now the only question that remains is the choice of hair color for the coaches.
“Probably blond or black,” Beletti said with a smile.
The dye-job wasn’t the only incentive for the Eagles. Beletti announced that this would be his last season after 22 years as the head coach and 37 overall as a coach in the district. He also was an assistant coach at the middle school for 15 years before moving up to the high school.
The Eagles wanted to send Beletti out a champion.
“This was a big accomplishment for us to go out as Del Val champs,” said senior Eli Harvey. “This is our last year with our coach and it was a big thing to be able to do it for him.”
Saying you want to win it for your coach is one thing. Doing it is another story, and the Eagles came out determined to hold up their end of the bargain by winning the first four bouts to open up a 15-0 lead.
Junior Blake Bryant set the tone in the opening bout with a 6-4 come-from-behind victory over Chase Gallo at 145 pounds. Bryant trailed 3-0 and 4-2 before coming back with a pair of reversals to take the match.
“I knew I had to keep moving on my feet because he was shooting low ankle shots,” Bryan said. “That was the key. I had to keep moving, keep fighting.”
Joe Sepielli followed with an 11-6 victory at 152. It was his first match since wrestling in the Rough Rider Invitational at Catasauqua nearly two months ago for a variety of reasons. Trefz won 8-1 at 160 and Ryley Whartnaby won by forfeit at 172 when the Bucs decided to switch Dom D’Agostino to 189 pounds.
“Coming in, we had it going three points one way or the other,” Beletti said. “That first match between Gallo and Blake Bryant, we weren’t sure how that was going to go and Blake pulled that out.”
The lead grew to 31-11 thanks to a forfeit victory from Ryan Vernon (215), a pin by Montana Raymond (285), and a major decision by Antony Parico (113). While the lead was comfortable, the Eagles weren’t home yet. The Bucs still had a chance to win the league title in the final four bouts by pin or technical fall.
Sophomore Richard Briggs made sure that didn’t happen. He pinned Interboro’s Noah Radziak in 1:56 at 126 pounds to clinch the victory and the title for the Eagles.
“We just didn’t have enough weapons,” Interboro coach Dan Tobin said. “You can only hide for so long. … Good for them.”
While the season is far from over the championship is a bright spot in what has been and up-and-down year for the Eagles (5-8 overall, 3-0 Del Val). Chi finished seventh at the Rough Rider Invitational, went 0-3 at the Colley Classic at West Chester East and 1-4 at the Quakertown duals.
“We’ve had a tough year, wrestling tough teams,” Beletti said. “We wrestled Quakertown and they beat us up. We’ve had some other teams along the way because we knew we were going to have to fight just to get a few wins this year. For me to go out with a Del Val championship, I can’t express how good that feels because we weren’t really sure that was going to happen.
“I couldn’t ask anything more from the kids. We’ve been getting beat up this year and to go out there and for every kid to do what they did, I’m just so proud of them. We’ve gone through a lot of bad things, COVID, sickness eligibility, everything you can think of. We finally got as close to a full lineup as you can possibly get and the kids really came through.”
