Bentworth’s Daniels ready to make his own path
Last year, the decision to stay at 215 pounds instead of dropping to 189 was not an easy one for Bentworth High School wrestler Vitali Daniels.
After all, the weight class was Dayton Pitzer’s to lose. Then a senior at Mount Pleasant, Pitzer would have been a four-time state champion if an injury hadn’t robbed him of his sophomore season.
So while solid wrestlers at 215 pounds were either dieting their way down to 189 or gorging themselves to make a decent heavyweight, Daniels stayed put. He would be more than happy to ride the coattails of Pitzer for as far as they would go.
Lo and behold, that would be the PIAA Class 2A championship at the Giant Center in Hershey.
While Pitzer would pin his way to a third state title before heading to Pitt, Daniels was left to his own devices in the weight class. He advanced to the blood round – the match that would assure a medal – and dropped an 8-6 overtime match to Abraham Keep of Girard.
The path begins anew Saturday as the individual tournaments for Class 2A get underway at various locations. Daniels will be at Burgettstown with wrestlers from Sections 1 and 2, 15 schools in all, looking to make his way back to Hershey and this time come back with a medal.
First-round action gets underway at 9:30 a.m. for this one-day event. Finals and consolation finals will begin 30 minutes following the second consolation round. The top six wrestlers in each weight class advance to the WPIAL Championships Feb. 24-25 at Chartiers Valley.
“I was pretty upset about (the loss to Keep),” said Daniels, a junior now. “You just have to work hard and bounce back from it. It’s definitely been a motivating factor. I don’t just want to place. I want to place as high as possible on the podium.”
Daniels takes a 22-7 record into the section tournament but that is a little misleading. He injured himself 11 second into his match with Canon-McMillan’s Matthew Furman at the Tri-CADA Tournament and was forced to default out. He got three losses on his record because of the default.
“He’s had a good year. He had that one tournament where he got hurt and had to default out of the rest of the tournament,” said Bentworth head coach Mike Shrader. “He’s wrestled pretty tough, made some changes that he needed to make from last year so we’re excited.”
Last year, Daniels wound up with a 30-8 record, of which 22 of the wins came via pin. It was one of those pins that seemed to spark him.
“Last year at the Burgettstown Tournament, I wrestled Anthony Govern (of Southmoreland) and pinned him,” said Daniels. “I wrestled him again at the WPIAL semifinals and the regional semifinals. That gave me the confidence that I could go far.”