There are three components that go into judging the success of a Wesleyan wrestling season: a winning dual meet record, placing top three in the Conference Tournament and placing individual wrestlers in the New England Championships. There is, however, one other category that defines a successful season: beating Williams.
Last Sunday, the Cardinals did all that, defeating previously ranked SUNY Oneonta (23) and Williams College (28).
Williams, wrestling at home, chose to battle Oneonta first. Williams won 24-17.
Suffering several injuries as well as 10 tiring bouts, Oneonta was unable to stave off the relentless attack of the Red and Black. Jumping out to a 7-0 lead, following a major decision by Dan Bloom ’10 and a dominating 8-3 win by captain Josh Wildes ’08, Wesleyan lead the rest of the match. Before the last bout was even wrestled, Wesleyan had secured the victory. Wesleyan had won seven of its last nine matches, so Coach Drew Black made the unorthodox decision to forfeit the last bout and get ready for Williams.
By deciding to hold Dan Conroy ’11 out of the match, Black was keeping his star freshman safe from top-ranked Oneonta heavyweight Trevor Hiffa and well-rested for a Williams meet that could potentially go down to the wire.
The Williams-Wesleyan dual meet began with an epic 125-pound match. Bloom, a New England finalist in his first year at Wesleyan, wrestled Ethan Cohen for the fifth time in his career. After seven minutes of wrestling, the score was tied 0-0, and after two minutes of sudden victory overtime, the match still had not been decided. Finally, after having pulled out four straight victories, Bloom faltered in the final seconds of the 10th minute. Williams led at that point by the score of 3-0.
Wesleyan, now looking at a six-point deficit, needed 141-pound Kyle Baicker-McKee ’10 to show his “funk-ability” and swing the tide back into Wesleyan waters. With two seconds left in the second period, however, Baicker-McKee was pinned by a questionable referee call, and Wesleyan was down 12-0.
With the meet quickly slipping away, the energy the team had been feeding off of was rapidly deflating. Dave Bachy ’10 was on hand to revive the Cardinals, winning 8-7 in the final seconds of the match.
“You’re coachable, you work hard in practice, and you never give up on the mat!” Black told Bachy after he won. “That’s why you’re 9-0!”
The next bout went to Williams as Zach Rolfe ’10 lost 6-2. The score was now 15-3, and with five matches left, Wesleyan would need to win all five to win the meet.
At 165 lbs, Josh Berkovic ’10 held on to a 7-5 decision, beating an All-New England wrestler in the process. Despite being the perceived underdog in this match, Berkovic never saw it that way.
“I wrestled tough,” Berkovic said. “I mean, I had been watching the kid wrestle all year and was really looking forward to it, because I knew that if I wrestled smart, I could beat him.”
Greg Hurd ’10 dominated the next Williams victim, winning 10-3.
Then, in a tightly-contested weight class, Black had a hard decision to make. Both Wesleyan wrestlers, Cam Maloni ’09 and Alex Segal ’09, had split time at the 184 weight class all year, trading victories both in the practice room and on the mat. In the end, Black felt it made the most sense to go with Maloni against Williams.
Reversing his wrestler early in the second period, Maloni splaydled his Williams wrestler to his back and secured the pin.
“I don’t remember thinking anything while I was out there,” Maloni said. “But when I got the pin, I just remember screaming, pumping my fist and thinking, ’Yes! We’re back in this!’”
The meet was tied 15-15 when John Gottfried ’09 stepped onto the mat. Knowing what was expected of him and what he needed to do for the team, Gottfried kept his match within a minor decision, only allowing Williams three points, instead of the four they expected to get.
With Wesleyan trailing by three, the entire dual meet was resting on the shoulders of one man: Conroy.
Trailing 1-0 going into the third period, Conroy reversed Williams with a minute and a half left. He drove the last stake in the heart of the Williams beast. The final score was Wesleyan 21, Williams 18.
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