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Southampton Press There’s nothing better than dominating at your own tournament. And that is exactly what the Westhampton Beach wrestling team did on Saturday, putting together what head coach Paul Bass described as some of the best performances of the season by his grapplers in a 39-19 win over Central Islip in the finals of the six-team dual meet event. Before facing Central Islip, the Hurricanes beat Newfield, 61-12, and downed Bellport, 46-9. Deer Park finished third by beating Bellport, 51-16, while Newfield defeated Hampton Bays, 46-18, for fifth place. Bass said he was particularly pleased with his team’s win against Central Islip, given his predictions for the outcome of each individual match. “When I go into a match, I make a list of matches that they’re better in, ones that
we’re better in and the ones that I think are toss-ups,” Bass explained. “I had five toss-up matches against Central
Islip, and we won four of those five.” Overall, the Hurricanes took nine of 12 matches from the Musketeers while forfeiting one weight class. Never one to give his team too much praise, Bass had plenty of criticism for his squad after its 61-12 win against Newfield, which may have motivated his team in its solid outing in the final match. “I went nuts on the kids because they weren’t wrestling as well as they could have been,” Bass said. “Sometimes you can win and not wrestle to your potential and sometimes you can lose and wrestle really well. They’re kids, so they’re always focused on the winning part, but we try to get them to wrestle hard for six minutes and whatever happens, happens.” What happened, not only in the tournament but in the team’s League VI home opener against Bayport-Blue Point a night earlier, was further indication that the Hurricanes are one of the top teams in the league. Westhampton Beach beat the Phantoms, 46-9, the night be- fore the tournament and the ability of his team to perform at a high level, despite spending most of its waking hours in the two-day span on the mats, was what Bass was happiest to see. “We had quite a few kids win their match on Friday night and win all their matches on Saturday,” Bass said. Pete Detore (103), Cory Hubbard (119), Hayes, John Prudenti (160), Paul Dilandro (152) and Alex Mazarakis (171) made a clean sweep in their weekend matches for Westhampton Beach. “They left it all out on the mat and good things happen when you do that,” Bass said, noting that while the final score against Central Islip was heavily in favor of his team, many of the matches were close. “Hopefully, that’s the beginning of them finally learning how to go hard in every match. We’ll be pretty good if we can do that.” Big Tournament Eight Hurricanes finished in the top three while 10 were placewinners and three
were champions. Detore won, 7-0, at 103 pounds, Conner Bass earned a 6-5 decision at 96 pounds and Dilandro earned
a 6-2 decision at 152 pounds. |
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