Bartlett tops Schaumburg, Elk Grove in quad
Bartlett proved to be an unwelcome guest Wednesday, crashing the party at Schaumburg by sending the host Saxons and their Mid-Suburban League peer Elk Grove to defeat on the wrestling mats while providing first-year Hawks coach Karl Bratland a successful opening night.
Bratland watched his club break open a tightly contested dual with Elk Grove with 4 falls in 6 matches. The Hawks used a tech-fall from top man Sal Annoreno to go ahead for good at 29-28 on the way to a 38-28 victory.
Bartlett later produced a pin frenzy to bounce Schaumburg 45-24.
“It was a pretty good start to the season,” said Bratland, who came over from North Central College, where he’d assisted his brother Kevin for the past six seasons, to take over for long-time coach Gary Cotie at Bartlett.
“We’ve got a good group of guys here,” Bratland said, “and all we’ve asked them to do is to wrestle with a lot of heart and fight, and they did that tonight to get our season going on the right foot.”
Upstate Eight Conference rival Streamwood went 0-2 on the night, as the Saxons got their lone victory of the night (45-30) against the Sabres.
Elk Grove coach Craig Johnson guided his lads to a 57-16 rout of the Sabres after falling to Bartlett.
“I really feel like Bartlett is a very good team, and we were in it with them and actually had a nice lead going for awhile,” said Johnson. “But in wrestling, there’s always a couple of matches that can have an effect on the final outcome, and when they got those three straight pins, the momentum kind of swung in their favor.”
The Grens were up 25-6 when Anthony Radun, Connor Johnson and Anthony Zipparro, who was trailing 5-3 at one time, all registered falls to pull the Hawks closer at 25-24.
After Bart Broda held off Nicholas James 10-6 at 126 pounds, Annoreno, who went a dazzling 37-4 last season, unleashed an arsenal of weapons on the Grens returning state qualifier Alex Mertes to pick up a technical fall at 3:56 to put his club up for good at 29-28.
“There’s a new attitude in the room this year with our new coach, but we all know there’s a lot of work ahead of us if we hope to have a successful season as a team,” said Annoreno, a junior who enters the season as the No. 6-rated wrestler in the state at 132 pounds.
The 2011 sectional qualifier and UEC champ was one of four Hawks who won by pin in their triumph over Schaumburg. Nick Mokodanski (160) and Greg Kielbasa (171) started the proceedings, and an exciting 11-9 win in OT by Zipparro highlighted the Hawks’ 21-point rout.
In the closing moments of regulation, Zipparro found himself trailing 7-5 after Ivan Gomez, wrestling up from 113, pulled off a near fall to take the lead. But consecutive reversals by both competitors brought the big crowd alive when, with seven seconds remaining, Zipparro drew even at 9-9 to send the match into extra time. He scored the takedown for the match-winner just a few seconds later.
“We’re going to go through some growing pains this season,” said Schaumburg’s defending state champ Josh Marchok, who recently signed his letter of intent to attend Stanford next fall and is rated No. 1 in the nation at 220 pounds by Intermat Magazine. “We lost a lot of experience and talent with Joe (LaManna) and Pat (Felde), and we’ve got a lot of new guys who were wrestling for the first time with the varsity. So it might be a little rough for us in the early stages of the season, but we’ll be all right later on.”
“We’re kind of going with the old saying of, it’s not how you start, but how you finish,” said Schaumburg’s first-year coach Mike LeVanti.
“We kind of took a hit against Bartlett, but they’re a tough little team which competes really hard. We had some good performances in our win over Streamwood (45-30) but that’s how I see it going for us for awhile — a lot of ups and downs. And it doesn’t get any easier this weekend when we go over to Conant for that big two-day tournament.”
Marchok, who was 38-0 last year in his memorable run to a state title, took a forfeit in the Saxons’ first match against the Sabres. He then wowed the crowd with a short, but spectacular 27 seconds of work against Bartlett which resulted in a fall. Schaumburg also got pins from Matt Stopka (182) and Mike Baumhardt (195).
A pin-happy Elk Grove club used a half a dozen falls, and three consecutive forfeits for 6 points to build an insurmountable lead. Junior Alex Curtis, a two-time sectional qualifier, did manage to put 6 points in the scorebook for his team in both of his matches on the evening with a pair of falls totaling just over three minutes combined.
“I feel real good about our team this season,” began Curtis, who finished fifth overall at the frosh/soph state tournament last year. “We have a lot of talent, and there’s a real good attitude on the team, and once we get our lineup set, and we gain some confidence, I feel we will have a solid second half of the season.”
Curtis was fourth at the UEC tournament behind Charlie Smorczewski of Batavia, who earlier in the year beat the Sabres star by 2 points, and by just one (3-2) in the league’s third-place match.
“It’s a long season, and early on, we’ve been working on our conditioning (first) before the technical side of things,” said Streamwood coach Bill Peach. “There’s a lot of work to do, but the guys are willing to put the work in to get better, and they all know it will pay off later on.”