Sarra: It's a Suffolk County fair with 8 state wrestling champs
Damon McQueen of Huntington during his 119 lb. match vs. St. Anthony's Grant Greene at the NYS Wrestling Tournament in Albany N.Y. (February 27, 2010) Credit: Photo by Pat Orr
ALBANY
Upstate folks were put on notice fairly early in the state wrestling championships that the Suffolk sectional team was going to do something special. The Suffolk wrestlers totaled 51 wins in the first 60 bouts. That's unheard of.
The winning never stopped, either. Suffolk paraded 15 wrestlers into the semifinal round - the equivalent of 25 percent of the qualifying field. And the domination didn't stop there. In last night's championship round, 11 Suffolk wrestlers were vying for individual titles and looking to break the state record of eight champions set by Nassau in 1963.
Suffolk tied the state mark with eight champions and scored a state-record 280.5 team points to win the championship last night.
But before we anoint this group as the all-time greatest sectional team, we have to look at all the variables that enabled them to reach such a lofty perch.
The Rochester area (Section V) scored a state-record 2741/2 points to win the Division I title in 2007.
Suffolk has won a state-record 18 titles since 1971. The team's highest score was 256 points in 2002, when all 15 participants earned All-State honors.
"This is a great group of wrestlers and we can take nothing away from what they've accomplished," Suffolk wrestling chairman Bob Panariello of Islip said. "But the tournament is different than in years past. Our team has grown with the addition of the wild cards, and that helps us score more points. But you still have to win."
It was like a Suffolk showcase last night. The addition of 10 at-large berths or wild cards made Suffolk impossible to take down this year.
Until 2007, sectional teams consisted of one wrestler per weight class - a total of 15 representatives. A change in the state tournament format called for the addition of at-large berths to grow the event and give second- and third-place finishers in various parts of the state an opportunity to win a state title.
The state changed the qualification rules and opened up the tournament to eliminate the three first-round byes in each weight class. There are 11 public school sections in the state, the PSAL and the CHSAA represented each year - a total of 13 wrestlers.
"We added four at-large berths in each weight based on a points system," Panariello said. "The Plattsburgh area doesn't have any large schools for Division I competition. Now we have a straight 16-man bracket."
The Suffolk sectional team had 10 at-large berths this year, sending them to the tournament with an army of talent. They could have handed the boys in navy blue and white the team title right after the quarterfinal round.
The other variable that contributed to Suffolk's dominance was the absence of some of the state's better wrestlers, who now opt to compete in the state Division II tournament. The state split the tournament into two divisions in 2004.
"The power base of most of the sections in the state is split between the Division I and Division II tournament now," Panariello said. "That is not the case in Nassau and Suffolk. Most of our schools compete in Division I and we're loaded with talent."
