Wrestling Runs 2-1 on Weekend

Unfortunately, the Harvard wrestlers don't have the luxury of being the home team very often. In fact, they only wrestle here two weekends the entire season. So, it was a rare, yet exciting occasion Friday and Saturday as Boston College, Princeton and Penn came to town and an amazing group of talented seniors bid farewell to the Malkin Athletic Center in their final home matches.

"These seniors have a tremendous work ethic that has paved the way for others," said Harvard Coach Jay Weiss. "Their fingerprints are all over this place, for they are responsible for raising the bar of this Harvard program."

Wrestling in front of a packed and rowdy house for all three meets, the Crimson went 2-1 for the weekend, sweeping its first two meets, but falling short in its effort to thwart their longtime Quaker rivals. The team cruised by Boston College Friday afternoon by a score of 25-3 before easily dismantling Princeton 37-3 later that night. Yet, the Crimson was unable to carry that momentum into Saturday's meet against Penn as they fell short to their Ivy nemesis 24-13.

"We had a very intense week of practice and I was worried they would be tired but on Friday they showed they weren't, they were physical in every aspect," Weiss said. "On Saturday we lost some close bouts. We are still not getting the breaks but we are not creating them either."

It all started Friday afternoon as the Eagles found themselves up against an unstoppable Harvard squad. The meet only included eight matches instead of the typical ten because B.C. did not have wrestlers for the 125-pound and 133-pound weight classes. At 141-pounds, freshman Nick Picarsic posted a solid 6-0 victory.

This was followed by three consecutive defeats handed to B.C. grapplers by freshman Max Odom (149-pounds), senior Kevin Kurtz (157-pounds) and senior Nate Ackerman (165-pounds) with the scores of 10-1, 8-1 and 15-4, respectively. At 174-pounds, senior co-captain Ed Mosley secured an easy 11-5 win, while at 184-pounds freshman Reggie Lee had a tremendous 16-1 victory. Bumping up to the 197-pound weight class, freshman Pat O'Donnell rounded out the scoring by taking his opponent 13-6.

Sophomore heavyweight Dawid Rechul faced the most difficult competition of the day against sophomore Antonio Garay, ranked No. 11 in the NCAA. Despite a large weight advantage for Garay, Rechul put up a strong showing and made Garay battle the entire seven minutes for his 9-6 win.

Later that night, the Crimson showed no signs of letting up. With a slightly different lineup, the wrestlers still thoroughly outwrestled the Tigers.

At 125-pounds, sophomore Brandon Rhoades had the first and only pin of the weekend, taking down opponent Marc Steyer at 2:44 into the match. Junior Matt Picarsic, who just returned last weekend from injury, earned a major defeat at 133-pounds over John Knorring with an 8-1. At 141-pounds, Nick, the younger Picarsic, faced a tough competitor in Joe Clark, falling 11-6. Odom, despite being ill, secured his pair of victories for the day with his 12-4 win over Jeff Bernd (149-pounds) while senior Tom Kiler followed suit at 157-pounds against Albert Pendleton with a commanding 12-2 victory.

Co-captains Joey Killar (165-pounds) and Mosley (174-pounds) posted matching 16-2 major victories against Greg Parker and Scott Pasquini, respectively. The freshman tandem of Lee and O'Donnell at 184- and 197-pounds showed similar domination with 8-1 and 13-4 wins. Finding an easier opponent in Princeton, Rechul grappled for the largest point spread of the night with his 21-6 victory.

Yet things didn't go quite the same way for the Crimson the following day.

"We wrestled well on Friday but not on Saturday," Killar said. "Though the competition was better, our guys weren't as aggressive."

And aggressiveness is definitely needed against this top Penn program. The reigning EIWA champs, the Penn squad came to Cambridge after handing Brown a 23-16 loss the previous night. They boast four nationally-ranked wrestlers and are ranked No. 14 in the nation and second in the EIWA behind Lehigh. While overall the meet did not go as the Crimson had hoped, there were several impressive individual performances that highlighted the day for Harvard.

At 165-pounds, Killar flexed his might as he had little trouble with opponent Tim Ortman. Grappling to an 8-0 major decision win, Killar controlled the entire match and showed why he is the EIWA's top-ranked wrestler and ranked no. 5 in the NCAA.

"Joey is wrestling very well right now," Weiss said. "He just handled him [Ortman]. He is looking really good."

Lee, a freshman phenomenon who has really started coming into his own, had one of the most thrilling matches of the night as he wrestled at his real weight class of 184-pounds. Lee has wrestled at 197-pounds for much of the season to replace injured junior Brad Soltis. Bringing the match into overtime with his last second takedown in the third to tie it 6-6, Lee refused to relinquish the match and succeeded in overtaking Gadsby, 8-6.

"I was pretty pumped. I haven't wrestled at my weight class for most of the year so I was very excited," Lee said. "I just tried to stay focused and stay on him."

"Reggie did well against Lehigh last week and then came in and did another great job this week," Weiss said. "He just keeps getting better and better."

Two more exciting matches also came at the hands of freshmen as Odom and O'Donnell both lost one-point bouts that certainly could have gone the other way.

At 149-pounds, Odom's battle with Jonathon Gough featured a lot of back-and-forth scoring that kept the match close all the way through. With 10 seconds remaining in the third, Odom scored a takedown to gain the lead, but with a second left Gough got a reversal to capture the 10-9 win.

O'Donnell turned in a terrific performance at 197-pounds facing No. 19 Mike Fickell. O'Donnell not only came close to beating this nationally-ranked wrestler, but he did so weighing in at 178 pounds.

Coming back to tie Fickell's 4-1 lead, O'Donnell almost came away with the upset but lost in the end as Fickell scored and managed an escape to take the match 5-4.

Rechul also wrestled a great match but was unable to garner the win at heavyweight as he faced off against No. 6 Bandele Adeniyi-Bada.

The two have met on several prior occasions, with Rechul progressively making things difficult for this All-American. Saturday proved no different as Rechul fought hard but eventually fell in a close 4-2 decision.

"Dawid wrestled him very well. He was right in there," Weiss said. "[Rechul] is so good because he doesn't wrestle like a heavyweight. He is very athletic."

The 133-pounds weight class pitted Matt Picarsic against Jason Nagle, the top two wrestlers in the EIWA for their class. Although Picarsic's strong return to the mats has been marked with a win last weekend over his Lehigh competitor and on Friday night over Princeton's Knorring, he was unable to overtake Nagle, falling 7-2 to the Quaker foe.

At 141-pounds, Nick Picarsic had a good freshman performance but was defeated 6-1 by Jody Giuricich. At 157-pounds, Kurtz faced one of Penn's highest ranked wrestlers in No. 2 Brett Matter, also first in the EIWA.

Kurtz kept him scoreless in the first, but Matter took control in the second and grappled on to a 7-2 win.

Mosley, ranked No. 4 in the 174-pound weight class, was set to square off against Penn's other star wrestler, No. 2 Rick Springman. However, Mosley suffered a knee injury early on in the match, which eventually forced him to forfeit early in the third period. The team is unsure of whether Mosley will return to action next weekend.

While the outcome is not what the Harvard wrestlers wanted, they will use it as a stepping stone from which to build.

"It is all a learning process," Lee said. "It would have been nice to win it but we need to move on from there and realize there are more important things."

Indeed, while beating Penn would have been great for Harvard, it is a meet with little significance when compared to the upcoming EIWA and NCAA tournaments in March, which are the real culmination of the season.

"Our main focus is still on the end of the year," Killar said. "Our main goal is to place at Nationals."

The team still has two more weekends of dual meets before next month's big tournaments. Next week, they will be back on the road as the travel to Cornell and Columbia. The Big Red, ranked No. 15 in the nation and third in the EIWA will be an especially tough opponent for Harvard.