Jack Mahoney better get the tee-shirt presses ready. Stamp these latest Sachem East championship shirts with “back-to-back” across the chest.
The Arrows, for the second straight season, captured the Section XI team championship, narrowly finishing ahead of John Glenn, 141.5-139, on the mat at Hofstra University Sunday night.
This is the first time a Sachem wrestling team has won back-to-back county wrestling titles since the 1986 and 1987 seasons.
“We had a lot of guys coming back this year who were part of the team last year, even if they weren’t starting,” said Sachem East coach Isaac Ramaswamy. “When you’re there you see other guys who can accomplish something like this and it makes it a reachable goal. When you see your teammates do it once, you can be successful again.”
It came down to Mark Tracy’s 182-pound championship bout against Deer Park’s David Hamil for East to move ahead of John Glenn for good in the standings.
Tracy wasn’t nervous at all. He wasn’t thinking about placing the team on his back for the match either. In fact, he wasn’t thinking about anything but outworking Hamil.
“I try to go out there stress free because stress will just hurt me,” he said. “I need to be positive about everything.”
Tracy, who previously beat Hamil, 4-3, at Eastern States in January, went up 4-0 after the first period, 9-1 after two and finished him, 11-3, to take the title.
“I knew if I wrestled hard I’d be in it, so I wrestled hard every second and he couldn’t keep up,” he said.
Earlier in the evening, Jakob Restrepo won Sachem East’s first championship of the night at 145 pounds. The top seed in his weight class entering the match, Restrepo had a chore in wresting Rocky Point’s Tommy Dutton, who comes from a talented wrestling pedigree and has been dominant in his own right throughout his high school career.
“Before the match I had a mindset that I was going to win no matter what,” he said. “I knew that I needed to score off the bat first. If I did that I’d be in the driver’s seat. The most important thing for me was to keep on scoring points and to keep adding to the lead. Don’t stop wrestling and keep it going.”
He made it 2-1 after the first period, 4-3 after two and eventually put Dutton away, 6-3, the final two points coming as insurance in the last 15 seconds of the match.
He wrestled Dutton at Eastern States last month and beat him, but it was close.
“I took my mistakes from that match and turned it over for this one,” he said.
Restrepo, now 40-0 this season, was also named Most Outstanding Wrestler of the tournament. He also joins rare company in the county as he and his father have now both won Suffolk County championships. His dad Carlos won a title at 103 pounds wrestling for Brentwood in 1997.
“He’s an amazing athlete and has things you can’t teach,” said Ramaswamy. “He’s a smart kid who figures things out. He’s a kid that if he practiced half the time he’d still be up on a podium. Because he puts so much effort in, he’s at the top.”
On Sunday, the entire Sachem East program was on top.
Sachem East Wrestlers who placed
- First, Jakob Restrepo, 145
- First, Mark Tracy, 182
- Third, Anthony Messina, 126
- Third, Sean Dee, 285
- Fourth, Doug Iadanza, 113
- Fourth, Mike Pistone, 170
- Fifth, Austin Serra, 185
VIDEO: Watch highlights from the Section XI Championship
RESULTS: View complete Section XI place winner list
PHOTOS: Click here to see more images from the finals
-Words and photos by Chris R. Vaccaro