CDT stories
McMURRAY — Let’s talk numbers.
The number 38 is the number of times Ty Watson has won a wrestling match this year.
The number 0 indicates how many times he’s been beaten this season.
The number 2 indicates the total of gold medals Watson has wom at the PIAA Class AA Southwest Region Tournament in his lifetime.
That number used to be 1 until he put on an awesome display in the tournament’s 145-pound finals Saturday at Peters Township High School.
Watson was one of three local wrestlers to reachaaa the finals of this rugged tournament but the only winner.
Watson should have a good seed when he next participates in a tournament, namely the PIAA Class AA Wrestling Championships at the Giant Center in Hershey. That gets underway Thursday morning.
Joining Watson in Hershey will be teammate Jack Darlington, who was sixth at 106 pounds. Bald Eagle Area had four qualifiers: Lucas Frye, second at 113;Coen Bainey, who was second at 120; Caleb Close, who was fourth at 172; and Noah Foltz, who took fourth at 189; Philipsburg-Osceola had two seventh-place finishers and an eighth.
Chestnut Ridge won the team title with 197.5 points. Burgettstown was second with 118 points and Forest Hills was 10 points behind Burgettstown in third place.
More numbers: Watson was 9-5 last season and is now 38-0.
“I was confident I was going to come out on top,” said Watson.
And he did, shutting out Trevor Weyandt of Chestnut Ridge, 7-0, in the finals. Watson made it to the finals with three straight pis: 3:13 over Chase Brandebura of Carlynton, 3:16 over Austin Foster of Philipsburg-Osceola in the quarterfinals and 5:36 over fourth-seeded Chase Frameli of Jefferson-Morgan,
Watson has a good feelig about his record.
“It”s just a number,” he said. “I’m just confident when I go and wrestle my match. It was a hard-fought match and I wrestled well. I’m happy.”
Bald Eagle Area wrestlers would have been happier had they had wins in the finals. But Lucas Frye was pinned by Landon Bainey of West Branch in just over a minute. And Coen Bainey ran into a buzz saw that was Chris Vargo, who took a 4-0 decision in a match that wasn’t that close.
“The plan was just to go out and wrestle like Lucas can and score points,” said Bald Eagle Area head coach Ron Guenot.”Not sure whether we were prepared to wrestle. I don’t know what happened. That’s not taking anything away from Landon and Vargo. The plan was just to go out and wrestle and we didn’t do it.”
Gavin Stewart of Marion Center won by default over Caleb Close at 172 and Brenan Morgan decisioned Noah Foltz, 11-5, at 189. Both matches were third-place battles.