Bears bounced from districts

BETHLEHEM — Justin Micklos wants to look back at the District 11 Class 3A wrestling tournament as a building block for Pleasant Valley.

The Bears moved four wrestlers to Day 2 of the tournament, but won’t be sending any competitors to this weekend’s Northeast Regional tournament at Liberty’s Memorial Gymnasium.

The four Bears — Everett Lata (freshman, 106), Alex Womack (junior, 160), Gavin Dorn (sophomore, 170) and Anthony Mazzella (senior, 195) — all found themselves in Saturday’s consolation rounds, but couldn’t pull out enough wins to finish in the top-five places needed to advance to regionals.

With Mazzella being the only senior from the group that advanced to Day 2 of the tournament, Micklos hopes that the disappointment of an early postseason exit for the program can foster a desire and urgency in the offseason for the whole program, but especially for the returning wrestlers that were eliminated on Saturday.

“Being that we have such a young team, I’m not entirely disappointed that we didn’t advance, but I think it was a real eye-opener for a lot of the kids,” said Micklos. “Now these guys know what to expect coming into the tournament next year. If you don’t like getting beat and getting knocked out, bring that into the offseason and build off of it.”

Womack made the deepest run of any Bear over the weekend, advancing to the third round of consolations before losing an 11-4 decision to Pocono Mountain West’s Charlie Maloy. It was a similar situation to Womack’s quarterfinal loss to Nazareth’s Connor Herceg, where Womack fell behind by a big margin in the first period and could never recover.

In his final bout of the season, Womack was the victim of a takedown and three near-fall points in the opening period to stare at a 5-0 deficit right off the bat against Maloy.

Saturday morning saw Lata, Dorn and Mazzella’s season’s come to an end as well in the second round of consolations. Lata was pinned by Freedom’s Connor Bevan in 39 seconds, and Dorn lost an 8-1 decision to Northampton’s Traisach Roland. Mazzella concluded his career with a 9-2 defeat to Easton’s Matthew Cruise.

“As a coach, you want to make it as far as possible and get guys to Hershey,” said Micklos. “When you get knocked out early like this, it hurts a little bit, but you build off of it.

“We have a young team, and we’ve got to take the positives from it, and hopefully next year our results can be a little different.”