The Northampton wrestling team wrapped up their dual meet season this past weekend at the District Duals at Freedom High School. The Kids came in as the third seed behind the two best AAA teams in the state, Bethlehem Catholic and Nazareth. They took care of business against Parkland in the quarterfinals, 40-26, before dropping a 57-13 semifinal match to the Blue Eagles. Becahi beat Nazareth for the title 33-25.

The fact that Northampton had beaten the Trojans 37-36 in the regular season based on the tiebreaker criteria of most bouts won put an upset into the realm of possibility before the match. Head coach Joe Provini explained why the contest on Saturday went fairly comfortably into the Kids’ column.

“We won the toss and we got Billy Stuhldreher back,” he said. “Those were two big things. Beyond that, I thought we wrestled well. We wrestled better today than we had all year.”

The first 5 bouts of the match were all pins within the first minute. Devlin Chevere, Dagan Condomitti, and Stuhldreher put the Kids up 18-0 by sweeping the 152- to 172-pound weight classes. Parkland took 189 and 215 to set up what turned out to be an exciting match at heavyweight.

Northampton’s second-year heavyweight, Gavin Grell, faced off against Parkland’s state-ranked Michael Gavrilesku. The two big men locked up high, looking for throws. The Trojan’s heavy took a 2-0 lead after 1, but Grell got the better of his more accomplished opponent by hitting a 4-point move in the second period, and scoring a takedown in the third to lead 7-2 with a minute left. After a Gavrilesku escape, Grell’s inexperience cost him. He could have taken a stalling penalty, but got entangled, thrown to his back, and pinned with 3 seconds left in the match.

With the dual tied at 18, Matthew Sommer put Northampton into the lead by fighting off his back in the first period and scoring 7 unanswered points to take 7-4 decision at 107. Parkland got a major at 114 to claim their only lead.

The Kids then ran off four straight matches to seize the day. Carson Wagner scored a 13-4 major at 121, brother Trey won by pin in 2:43, Aiden Micheli notched a 7-4 decision, and Austin Noe put the contest out of reach with a pin in 52 seconds.

The dual with the Blue Eagles offered few highlights for the Kids as Nazareth returned a couple of wrestlers who had been injured at the time of their 46-22 win against Northampton in January.

Condomitti started things off with a 14-5 major over Brayden Zuercher at 160. Nazareth won the next 6 bouts by fall.

Carson Wagner dropped a 3-2 decision to the Blue Eagles’ Tahir Parkins in matchup of wrestlers with state medal aspirations at 121.

Devlin Chevere won by fall at 152 to close out the match, but the man of the match for the Kids was Trey Wagner.

Wagner faced off with Nazareth’s two-time state medalist Charlie Bunting, who took 3rd in the state at 120 last year. Bunting scored a first period takedown to go up 2-0. Wagner escaped and scored a second escape to start the second period to even the match.

At 2-2, Bunting took the down position to start the third period. Wagner rode him for the full two minutes setting up overtime. Wagner got the bout-clinching takedown 30 seconds into sudden victory.

Provini discussed his talented freshman, “Trey’s had a great season. He’s won a lot of matches and beat some good guys, but that was his first signature win. He was in the match the whole time. He fought everything off and found a way to win. That’s what the best guys do.”

The team returns to action Feb. 24 for individual districts at Liberty High School.