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Hazleton Area has been undermanned all season.
Fourteen wrestlers on the roster hurt the team at the PIAA Team Championships.
Facing teams with rosters of at least two dozen wrestlers, the Cougars couldn’t match up perfectly with those squads.
On Friday morning, they saw their team season come to an end at the Giant Center in Hershey falling to Owen J. Roberts 45-27 in the Class 3A consolation round.
“To be honest, I was disappointed today,” Hazleton Area coach Keith Maurer said. “I don’t think we wrestled well at all and gave up too many bonus points and four pins against a team that I think wasn’t as tough as (Thursday’s match against Cedar Cliff). I thought we could have won seven matches today.”
The Cougars only got five wins on Friday. All of their victories were bonus-point wins via pin from Anthony Martoccio (126 pounds), Jimmy Hoffman (138) and Shane Noonan (170), while Charles Everdale (113) won by tech fall and Jake Maurer (106) won by major decision. But ultimately, their depth was an issue also having to forfeit a weight class in addition to losing eight bouts.
“We need to be better getting out and recruiting more guys,” Maurer said. “A lot of these teams have 24-25 guys. We walked in with 14 guys. When you have that, it’s really tough to compete like that. I think we need to get more guys on the team so we can get more guys in weight classes.”
Though the team went 0-2 at the event, there were positives.
Maurer, Hoffman and Noonan all went 2-0 in their two matches. Hoffman is a returning state runner-up and was probably expected to win his two matches. But the other two were a pleasant surprise.
“I think he’s coming into his own at the right time. I like the way he’s wrestling and hopefully he can keep that going,” Maurer said about Noonan.
Maurer was equally optimistic about his son.
“Jake, he wrestled fairly well,” he said. “He’s closing in on 100 wins needing one more. He’s still acclimating himself being down (to 106 pounds), but he controlled his weight well and I hoped he keeps it going.”
The team will now be idle for 13 days until the District 2 Class 3A Tournament takes place on Feb. 24-25. Coach Maurer hopes wrestling under the big spotlight in Hershey for two days gets his squad more prepared for long individual runs, including what he hopes will be the team’s first team title at districts since 2010.
“We wrestled a fairly challenging schedule so we have to start working towards a district title now,” Maurer said. “Hopefully this helps us out to get a taste of it and hopefully in two weeks we win it.”
Owen J. Roberts 45, Hazleton Area 27
106 — Jake Maurer (Haz) maj dec Jacob Dunleavy 17-4; 113 — Charles Everdale (Haz) tech fall David Forrest 16-1, 4:44; 120 — Luke Resnick (OJR) tech fall Stephen Martisofski 17-2; 126 — Anthony Martoccio (Haz) pinned Tyler McCutchen 4:03; 132 — Anthony Petrucelli (OJR) pinned Jayson Brielmeier 3:41; 138 — Jimmy Hoffman (Haz) pinned Zachary Englehardt :15; 145 — William Meredith (OJR) dec Jake Marnell 7-0; 152 — Dan Mancini (OJR) pinned Dallas Solomon 2:55; 160 — Ricky McCutchen (OJR) pinned Jeremy Aquino :44; 170 — Shane Noonan (Haz) pinned Jacob McLeod :57; 182 — Jason Zollers (OJR) dec Bryce Reed 7-1; 195 — Nick Duliakas (OJR) maj dec Carson Kinney 9-1; 220 — Dylan Bauer (OJR) won by forfeit; 285 — Alejandro Acosta (OJR) pinned Travis Kostyal 1:33
Note: Match started at 160pounds