Kam Abboud watched the replay of his District 11 finals loss to Nazareth’s Jack Campbell on the Liberty bench Saturday inside Memorial Gymnasium.
After suffering a 2-1 defeat in the gold medal round, Abboud sat with one of his coaches and watched the replay as other championship bouts were taking place. It was a mental training session that helped give Abboud some understanding of his performance and where he needs to improve this weekend at the Northeast Regional tournament back at Liberty if he wants to steal gold.
“I felt like I wasn’t active enough and I was kind of on my heels the whole match,” said Abboud. “I feel best when I’m attacking and he had me backing up 95-percent of the match. I was wrestling a little weak and it wasn’t a bad match, but it’s tough to score when you’re retreating that much. I’d love to have that one back, but hopefully I get another crack at that in regionals.”
Abboud (139) led Liberty’s way on the district weekend, coming away with a second-place finish, as the Hurricanes pushed three wrestlers to regionals, including Seth Kolb (HWT, fourth-place) and Dante Morrison (215, fifth-place). Jasiah Pagan (114) and Davian Carasquillo (121) both finished in sixth-place, but only the top five wrestlers from each class advance to regionals.
For Abboud, his weekend might have been dampened by losing in the finals, but it didn’t diminish his performance overall.
He posted a tech fall victory in his opener and then took care of Freedom’s Joe Bodnar 5-1 in the quarters before topping Bethlehem Catholic’s Marco Frinzi 6-2 in the semifinals to punch his first ever district championship ticket.
“I’m definitely proud of what I accomplished,” Abboud said, “but I definitely got some added motivation and fire going into regionals and hopefully try to rectify this.”
Abboud and company now enter this week’s tournament with the goals of placing in the top four to advance to Hershey, which is something all three regional qualifiers have never done.
Abboud took third at districts last year and then stumbled to a sixth-place finish at regionals, while Kolb and Morrison didn’t even place at districts last year.
Kolb made a run to the heavyweight semifinals, but lost to eventual champion, Sean Kinney from Nazareth, by fall in 1:13. He then lost a 3-2 decision to Parkland’s Michael Gavrilesku in the medal round to settle for fourth.
Morrison also reached the semis and lost a tight 4-3 decision to Easton’s Kurtis Crossman. Morrison had a hangover in the consolation round, as he dropped his next match to Pleasant Valley’s Jason Schubert 5-2, putting him in the do-or-die fifth-place bout against Northampton’s Landon Roland.
Morrison took any doubt out of the match with a fall in 2:22 to cement heading to regionals.