We started off a little slow, but I thought the guys wrestled well. Outside of Allen (Park, at 119), everyone's still in it. We've got nine guys still wrestling, and five in the semis.
We had 12 kids advance to the section finals last year. Our hope this year is to have at least 11 or 12 make it to the finals.
We're hoping the third time will be the charm. Winning a state title has been our goal all season.
With those two out of the lineup, and mentally the team was deflated and knew it would be tough to win. But we learned a little more about Reynolds. We didn't duck anybody. We put our good wrestlers against theirs to see what happened.
We're looking forward to the competition. We're coming off two good weekend tournaments and this will be a good test. The team is looking forward to the tournament. Reynolds, Greenville and Northern Lehigh have excellent squads.
We're healthier now than we've been all season. So, we're looking forward to the matches.
He's a very dedicated kid. Most impressive is, whether Donnie wins or loses, he's cheering on the other kids from the bench and that takes class.
He's down, but to come back and win, that shows character.
Joe showed me something in Saturday's match against Jacob. We've been working on his conditioning, and he was able to go a strong six minutes. He'll be fine with another good week of work.
Our goal is to win the WPIAL and PIAA titles. I guess that means if we want to win a title, we might have to meet Reynolds at 10 a.m. on Feb. 11.
Our goal is to win section, WPIAL, and PIAA titles this year. Winning a PIAA title is the only goal we haven't attained.
I tell them to be ready for anything. I encourage them to stay focused.
That's what I told the team after the team tournament. We're far from finished. We have enough good individuals that are capable of getting back to Hershey, winning matches and placing. I believe it's going to be us and Reynolds fighting it out again.
I was most impressed with how dominant we were. My kids gave up only four points all night and two came on escapes where we let them up. We're battle tested, rested and healthy.
Winning the WPIAL title gives us a break until Friday. We have kids limping around and others who have shoulders and ankles taped. We need the five-day break to heal and drill.
We don't care who we wrestle. This is a together squad and I told them to relax and have fun. They've worked hard to put themselves in this position.
We're really happy right now. We all geared toward peaking this weekend, and we did. We were a little slow (Friday), but today, everybody was firing on all cylinders.
This time we'll have Lee and Joe in the lineup. That's four WPIAL titles that weren't in the lineup last time. I think we're as good as any team in Pennsylvania.
We're very deep and we have a winner at every weight, so we just have to patiently let the match evolve and we're eventually going to find our points.
To be honest with you, we were hoping to have nine to the semifinals. I thought they all wrestled good. Some of the guys just didn't finish.
The WPIAL runner-up actually has an easier road to the PIAA title match.
The team jokes that we're a dynasty because they say if the New England Patriots won three out of four and they're a dynasty, then so are we.
It's a shame it happened. It was out of frustration more than anything. Fortunately, no one panicked after we gave up those extra points. And Donnie did a phenomenal job to get it back.
They wrestled well. Donnie and Lee have been here so many times, and I think that has a lot of bearing on it.
I'm satisfied. This is great competition, and we had a lot of wrestlers do well. I'm really proud of Stefan. He's 182 pounds and he did a great job.
I really thought Jeff should've won. You've got to believe you're going to win. But I think all of our guys will bounce back.
You can see it's hurting him on his feet a little bit.
