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C-M gets rematch with Kiski in PIAA wrestling consolations

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Blaze Kansco of Canon-McMillan uses a cross-face move on Mike Manley of Tunkhannock during their 160-pound bout of the PIAA Class AAA Wrestling Team Tournament Friday in Hershey, Kansco won 1-0.

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Nick Konyk of Canon-McMillan turns Josh Flaherty during their 195-pound bout of the PIAA Class AAA Wrestling Team Tournament Friday in Hershey. Kansco won by fall in 2:28.

HERSHEY – It’s funny how wrestling works out sometimes.

Canon-McMillan and Kiski, having met a week ago in the WPIAL Team Tournament, had to travel 230 miles to the middle part of the state for a rematch.

The Big Macs, who beat Kiski, 27-25, in the semifinals of the WPIAL tournament, will meet this morning (9 a.m.) in the consolation quarterfinals in the PIAA Class AAA Wrestling Team Tournament in Hershey.

The two teams took different paths to get to the match. Canon-McMillan is fresh from a 34-18 win over Tunkhannock in Friday night’s consolations. Kiski is coming off a heartbreaking 33-32 loss to Nazareth by Criteria I (most nearfall points), the ninth tiebreaker in the system.

“It’s strange how that worked out,” said C-M head coach Jason Cardillo. “I thought Cumberland Valley and Central Dauphin were going to meet again. We’ll see (Kiski) again and we thought we might have. It seems every year we see the same teams, North Allegheny and Kiski. Latrobe is always in there and us. In my first year as an assistant, we wrestled Kiski in the WPIAL finals. We wrestled them in the semifinals of the run we had there and wrestled them the last two seasons.”

In the WPIAL semifinals, James Zeremenko pinned Tyler Worthing in 25 seconds after nearly getting pinned to turn the match.

“We’ll do it one more time,” said Logan Macri, C-M’s 113-pounder. “I know we wrestled these Kiski kids four or five times this year in dual meets and tournaments. It’s always an exciting match and you kind of know what’s going to happen.”

Tunkhannock won the first three bouts by decision but Canon-McMillan won seven of the last nine. Brendan Furman had a pin at heavyweight and Macri a technical fall in the run.

The Big Macs, the WPIAL runner-up, were thrown into the wrestlebacks of this tournament after losing 37-20 to District 1 champion, Boyertown. They managed just six victories and no falls. Boyertown won the other eight and got three pins through the middle and upperweights.

Tim Hritsko gave Canon-McMillan its only lead, 3-0, with a decision to open the dual meet at 132 pounds. Boyertown hurt the Big Macs after that, winning three in a row with a fall and two decisions to forge a 12-3 lead.

Blaze Kansco stopped the Boyertown run with technical fall at 160 but Elija Jones took a 4-2 decision from Tommy James and Zeremenko was pinned by Gregg Harvey to make it a 21-8 lead after 182.

Interestingly, three of the Big Macs big guns – Macri at 113, Matt Oblock at 126 and Furman at heavyweight – managed only nine bout points from three decisions.

“We just gave up too many big points (against Boyertown),” said Cardillo. “If we had sneaked by in a couple of those matches and not given up those bonus points, it would be a different match.”

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