Lehigh University
Wrestle-Offs
Wrestle-Offs kick off season in front of record crowd
11/4/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Wrestling
The night started out with two exhibitions, as John Stout took a major decision over Patrick Berger 12-1 at 125 and Tom Curl defeated Anthony Prinzivalli by a close 3-0 score at heavyweight. There were no takedowns in the match, just two escapes by Curl and a penalty point for stalling on Prinzivalli.
Mario Stuart took a win by forfeit at 125 to start the night as Taylor Graham didn’t make weight, and then the first official match took place with freshman Matt Ciasulli picking up a 7-0 decision over Matt Ennis at 133. At 141, Cory Cooperman impressed in his first action after moving up this season from 133, beating Mark McCauley 10-1.
In the most intriguing action of the night, 6-3 Matt Anderson defeated 5-3 David Nakasone at 149, using his length to really take over the match and winning by a tech fall 16-0 at The night closed with excitement, as all of the last three matches came down to the very end. Sophomore Travis Frick held off freshman Dave Helfrich 4-2 at 184, Matt Cassidy escaped Paul Weibel in the most even match of the night 3-2 at 197, and finally heavyweight senior Joe Sahl defeated Anthony Livecchi 6-3 to close out the wrestling. Assistant coach Chris Ayres was pleased with the wrestlers’ efforts, but said its tough to come away happy from Wrestle-Offs. “It’s hard,” said Ayres. “On the one hand, you want to see your top wrestlers come out and dominate, but if they do, then you feel bad for the guys that lost. On the other hand, you don’t want the matches to be too close, because that makes you nervous too. Overall, I think we are happy the guys all competed hard and had a ton of fight in them. I think that’s the one thing we definitely wanted to see.” The Mountain Hawks will begin their regular season next Friday, November 14, as they welcome national power
Weight Matchup Result Score
125 John Stout (White) over Patrick Berger (Brown) MD 12-1
HWT Tom Curl (Brown) over Prinzivalli (White) dec. 3-0
133 Matt Ciasulli (Brown) over Matt Ennis (White) dec. 7-0
141 Cory Cooperman (White) over Mark McCauley (Brown) dec. 10-1
149 Matt Anderson (White) over David Nakasone (Brown) WTF 16-0, 157 Derek Zinck (White) over Ben Bishop (Brown) MD 19-6 165 Troy Letters (White) over Daniel Murrer (Brown) MD 20-6 174 Brad Dillon (White) over Jon Bruno (Brown) MD 26-11 184 Travis Frick (Brown) over Dave Helfrich (White) dec. 4-2 197 Matt Cassidy (Brown) over Paul Weibel (White) dec. 3-2 HWT Joe Sahl (White) over Anthony Livecchi dec. 6-3
