Six area wrestlers ready for state tourney
Shamokin Area coach Todd Hockenbroch has four wrestlers headed to Hershey for the PIAA Class AA State Wrestling Championships, three of whom are making return trips and a fourth who has 115 career varsity bouts. Together, Brandon Pesarchick, Josh Lahr, Derek Shingara and Wes Tillett have wrestled more than 500 career varsity bouts.
Line Mountain coach Mike Martz has two wrestlers going to Hershey, one a freshman, albeit a very, very good one, and the other a sophomore, also a first time state qualifier. Zain Retherford and Adam Kritzer have a combined total of 97 career varsity bouts.
Obviously, the two coaches have different takes on how to get their wrestlers ready for the tournament, which starts Thursday at 9 a.m. at the Giant Center and continues on Friday and Saturday.
Hockenbroch can be a little specific on how he wants each of his wrestlers to go about their business. Martz, on the other hand, just wants his kids to go out and do what they do, and not get too complicated.
Hockenbroch's biggest project this week is probably senior Shingara, a three-time qualifier but one who is coming off a bad loss, an 8-0 defeat to Blue Ridge's Alex Stanton in the Northeast Regional 140-pound final. Until that loss, Shingara (31-7) had been fairly sailing through the postseason tournaments.
"Derek will be fine," Hockenbroch said. "We'll take a look at tape and see what went wrong in that match and try to figure out how to go after him (Stanton) if he wrestles him again. Derek just needs to continue to be aggressive."
Shingara actually was the aggressor in the loss to Stanton, initiating several shots, but the Blue Ridge wrestler surprised him with his strength and countering ability.
Shingara will open the tournament against Bermudian Springs' Anthony Dalton (33-8), the third-place finisher in the Southeast region. Hockenbroch’s use of tape as preparation worked well last week for Tillett, who rebounded from a loss by pin in the district final to Benton’s Tyler DeMott by beating the defending state runnerup 9-5 in overtime in the regional 285 final.
Although Tillett, a junior, is making his first trip to the state meet, he is probably a little more battle tested than the ordinary first timer, with a 92-23 career record, a second- place finish in the prestigious Reno Invitational in December, and a win over DeMott. Tillett will open the tournament against Milton Hershey’s Chris Ramirez (24-8), the fifth-place finisher in the Southeast regional.
By comparison, Martz doesn’t want to put a whole lot of extraneous information into the heads of either Retherford or Kritzer. “In general, I don’t like to fill their heads (any qualifiers) with toomany thoughts,” Martz said. “Just let them wrestle. I don’t want them to pore over things about the other wrestlers. I think it’s more fun for them and they’re better off that way.”
Retherford (36-1), who has won sectional, district and regional titles at 103, likely will do some homework on his own, and has probably already wrestled some of the others at that weight in numerous tournaments over the years on the way up to the varsity level. Very few wrestlers hit the varsity level running the way Retherford has, and he will be one of the favorites at that weight.
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