Trinity back after long layoff
He’s been through it before, only not as head wrestling coach at Trinity High School.
The long wait from the end of the regular season until the start of the individual championships can seem like forever.
It challenges coaches, whose teams did not make the team tournament, to make practices different, enjoyable and effective.
“We’ve just tried to mix it up a little bit,” said Ron Tarquinio, Trinity’s head coach. “We tried to focus on different positions we need to work on. Doing that and just keeping it light and positive the past couple weeks. I’ve been surprised at how they’ve handled the couple week’s layoff.”
The Hillers will be back in action, along with other Class AAA teams, for the four section championships that will play out Saturday.
Trinity will be at the Section 4 Tournament at Peters Township. Section 3 teams will gather at North Allegheny, Section 2 will take place at Hempfield and Section 1 at Kiski.
Action at Peters Township gets underway at 9:30 a.m. with the finals expected about 4 p.m. on Saturday.
“I didn’t know how they were going to do it this year but in the past they would take the top three teams in the subsection and wrestle for fifth place,” said Tarquinio. “We weren’t one of the top two teams but we thought we could get another dual meet in there. But this year, they took the top two out of each section.”
Teams could save a schedule point to at least schedule once during the break. Trinity went to the Derry Duals.
“But even with that, we’re going to have three weeks since our last dual,” said Tarquinio. “They talked about giving teams (not in the team tournament) an extra scheduling point but it didn’t happen.
“We did some different things in practice to make it fun. Throw some games in there. Then we would mix it up a little bit.”
Even before the first whistle, there have been some problems. A weight mixup at the state team tournament in Hershey will make Canon-McMillan’s Jacob Houpt remain at 120 rather than drop to 113.
That also means the Big Macs’ Andrew Binni, who was planning a drop to 120, will remain at 126.
On the injury front, Waynesburg will be without 113-pounder Ky Szewczyk, who injured his knee during the season. The Raiders also will be without Joe Simon, who had a growth spurt and can no longer make 120. Zander Phaturos, Mac Church and Colten Stoneking are right above Simon in the roster.
And Cole Homet, a state runner-up last season, has decided not to wrestle in the individual tournaments because of injuries to his arm sustained in an automobile accident last summer.