Howard’s goal begins with first step
Trey Howard is treating this wrestling postseason as if it were his last chance because, well, it is.
The talented senior from Waynesburg High School has been to the Giant Center in Hershey, but only as a spectator.
He wants to spend this postseason as a competitor in Hershey and that’s what motivates him as the WPIAL Section 4-AAA Tournament gets underway Saturday at Chartiers Valley High School.
“I’m ready. I want to get to Hershey, for sure,” said Howard. “It’s a great atmosphere. I love it.”
Howard, the owner of a 29-5 record this season, is the top seed at 145 pounds in tomorrow’s one-day tournament. The top five wrestlers in each weight class of the four section tournaments – Kiski, Connellsville and Fox Chapel are the other sites – advance to next week’s WPIAL Class AAA Championships at Canon-McMillan High School.
Action for the Section 4 Tournament begins at 9:30 a.m. and runs straight through to the finals.
Howard has come close to earning a trip to the state wrestling tournament. He was a win away last season, when he competed at 152 pounds, and one win away in 2017, when he was at 145.
This season, he settled in at 145 and stayed there.
“I feel a lot more comfortable at 145,” Howard said. “It feels like I’m bigger than most people at 145. They bumped me up to help the team a couple of times, but I wrestled 145 most of the year.”
Waynesburg head coach Joe Throckmorton said Howard is one of the hardest workers he’s ever coached and that’s the secret to his success.
“He’s totally dedicated to it and well deserving of (the top seed),” said Throckmorton. “He placed at the (Beast of the East), placed at Powerade. He’s excited and we’re excited. He hasn’t made it to Hershey yet. He should have already been there but that just makes him that much more hungry. He’s so deserving of whatever he gets.”
The Raiders have had a lot of time off after the team tournament, nearly three weeks. It’s easy to get into a rut, so the effort was made to change the routine.
“We’ve been practicing hard. We didn’t let up,” Howard said. “We had some fun. We played some games when we didn’t have to worry about that. Now, we’ve been driving hard every single day this week.”
Throckmorton invited other teams to join them for practice and scrimmages.
“We mixed it up a little bit,” he said. “Sometimes, we’d bring in some alumni.”
Other local top seeds are Cole Homet (120), Luca Augustine (152) and Ryan Howard (220) of Waynesburg; Jimmy Baxter (113) and Gerrit Nijenhuis (170) of Canon-McMillan; Cole Whitmer (182) of Trinity; and Quentin Franklin (Hvy) of South Franklin.