Chaminade Wrestlers Stick Baldwin With Pins

The varsity wrestling team used a couple of giant pins to hold together a victory over Baldwin in their unofficial season opener Friday night.

Sophomore Mike Vindell and junior Angelo LoRusso both scored second-period pins to secure a 36-18 team win for Chaminade against Baldwin in the dual meet.

"The underclassmen really stepped up tonight," Flyers head coach George Dlugolonski said.

Friday night's match at Baldwin Senior High School was outside Chaminade's official league – the Nassau-Suffolk Catholic High School Athletic Association – but Dlugolonski said it was an important test for his wrestlers nonetheless. Chaminade is having what Dlugolonski is calling a "" due in part to the fact that several of the team's top wrestlers graduated last year.

Still, Chaminade's varsity roster stood up to a heavy onslaught by the Bruins, which assures Dlugolonski he has some talent on his hands. Friday night's match-ups pitted his wrestlers against tough competition across the board. Before the meet, Dlugolonski said he hoped the outing against Baldwin would give him some insight into where he needs to focus training for his first league meet coming up in January. Baldwin definitely obliged.

Baldwin's wrestlers gave nothing away easily, making use of impenetrable sprawls to crush out many of Chaminade's early takedown attempts. Despite Baldwin's solid defense, the Flyers continued an aggressive pace, consistently attacking with quick shots for single and double-leg takedowns.

Dlugolonski had no problem motivating his team members, who showed off the solid fundamentals and excellent conditioning the veteran coach has been working on during pre-season.

During the first period of the 135-pound match between Chaminade junior Paul Sferrazza and Baldwin's Victor Robinson, Dlogolonski even had to yell out, "Slow down!  Slow down!"  The first period ended 0-0 despite a laundry list of quick attacks by Sferrazza. Sferrazza gave up a takedown but responded with two escapes to tie the second period 2-2 before answering with a takedown of his own in the third and adding two more escapes - after one more takedown by Robinson - to win the match 6-4.

Sophomore Declan Gray followed up by staging another pitched battle at 140 pounds against Baldwin's lanky Shaquiel Spradly, who was able to sprawl effectively against Gray's repeated shots. Gray turned the corner to finish a takedown in the first period, followng up with another in the second, but Spradly made it a close match again with a two-point reversal at the end of the period. Gray turned up the heat in the third with a reversal and a nail-biting three-point near fall that ran up against the third-period buzzer. The move might have yielded a third pin for Chaminade if the period had been a couple seconds longer.

Junior Josh Wheldon and Seniors John Sikula, Tom Fasano, and Jay Valentine also won individual matches to contribute to the Chaminade win.