The PIAA Wrestling Championships is Pennsylvania’s most-popular high school championship event, and WJPA Radio has brought home the excitement for over 70 years. Class 2A started Thursday morning, including 14 wrestlers from Washington & Greene Counties. A dozen more from the two-county area are in the Class 3A brackets that opened up Thursday afternoon. This eight-session tournament runs through the finals on Saturday with all the action live on WJPA-AM (1450) and online. Mark Uriah is calling the action for the 40th consecutive year. He’s joined by Greg Warnock and Greg Smith in the booth. PIAA Wrestling Homepage
Thursday’s 2A preliminaries saw Burgettstown keep all four qualifiers alive but only Joey Sentipal reached the quarterfinals. Bentworth’s Chris Vargo and Vitali Daniels will wrestle in the quarterfinals Friday, along with Braedon Welsh of Ft. Cherry. Beth-Center, Chartiers-Houston and McGuffey each have one wrestler still alive in the consolation brackets. Three other Washington County qualifiers were eliminated while Jeff-Morgan’s Chase Frameli forfeited both of his scheduled bouts, dealing with a knee injury.
Burrell is leading the rest of the WPIAL 2A schools with four wrestlers still alive, two in the quarterfinals. Frazier and Central Valley have two quarterfinalists alive, one each for Indiana and Laurel. Mt. Pleasant and Quaker Valley have two consolation wrestlers while Carlynton, Greensburg Salem, Hopewell, Keystone Oaks and Montour have one each.
Not to be outdone, Class 3A wrestlers from the two-county area put on quite a show. Nine of the 12 qualifiers have reached the quarterfinals, including four from Waynesburg (Mac Church, Rocco Welsh, Brody Evans and Eli Makel), all three Canon-McMillan wrestlers (Tanner Mizenko, Andrew Binni and Matthew Furman) and both Trinity qualifiers (Blake Reihner and Ty Banco). Only one of the 21 qualifiers from Washington/Greene/southern Allegheny/Mon Valley area has been eliminated. Waynesburg’s Nate Jones lost twice in Thursday’s action. In addition to the nine quarterfinalists, Chris Cibrone (Peters Township) and Jake Conroy (Ringgold) are still alive in 2nd Round Consolations.
PIAA Wrestling Championships WJPA-AM (1450) Listen Here!
Friday, March 10
8:50 am 2A Quarterfinals, 2nd/3rd Consolations
2:05 pm 3A Quarterfinals, 2nd/3rd Consolations
7:20 pm 2A Semifinals, 4th/5th Consolations
Saturday, March 11
8:50 am 3A Semifinals, 4th/5th Consolations
1:50 pm 2A Championship & Consolation Finals (1st-8th place)
6:50 pm 3A Championship & Consolation Finals (1st-8th place)