‘We Have to Do the Work’
By Jack Graves
(03/11/2010) Further evidence that East Hampton’s wrestling program, which begins at the KID level with first graders, has to continue to beef itself up was provided at the recent state public high school
 Jack Graves
|
championships, where John Glenn had among its eight place-winners a state champion and a third-place finisher and Rocky Point had three state champions.
John Glenn was the champion of League VI, the league in which East Hampton High School competes, and Rocky Point was the runner-up. At 2-5, the Bonackers finished in a tie with Miller Place and Amityville for fifth place, all of them ahead of 0-7 Shoreham-Wading River.
Joe Russo, who at the beginning of the season correctly predicted that Rocky Point would be the state champion, said during a conversation this past week, “Glenn, Rocky Point, and Westhampton Beach [League VI’s third-place team at 5-2] have a lot of seniors, but we have to do the work. We have a lot of kids who have the potential to be front-runners. We can take a surprising number to the counties next year, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. . . . Coach Tseperkas and I have already drawn up a schedule for the off-season.”
About a decade ago, “we had four all-county wrestlers in the same year and up to seven in the top-five countywide rankings,” said Russo, who, with his son Louis, and Tseperkas, assisted by Steven Ward and Christian Westergard, has been overseeing East Hampton’s KID (first-through-sixth-grade) wrestlers.
According to Russo, the KID standouts have been Christian Johnson, Brandon Johnson, Axel Alanis, Robert Padilla, George Cortes, Kevin Boles, Andres Koutogiannis, Martin Soto, Mathew Gonzalez, and Kevin Bunce.
Thus far, the KID group has competed in tournaments in Eastport, Plainedge, Levittown, and Westhampton Beach. Coming up are tournaments at Shoreham (this Saturday), and in Massapequa and Clarksville, Md., near Baltimore, over the March 27-March 28 weekend.
Eighteen of KID’s roster of two dozen were to have wrestled last weekend in a tournament for first-through-sixth graders at Westhampton Beach. A half-dozen seventh and eighth graders, who are coached by Frank Sokolowski and Louis Russo at East Hampton’s middle school, were to have competed at another tournament.
“It’s been great to have Frank and Louis coaching at the middle school level,” said Russo. “They were League 1 champions together, Louis at 130 pounds and Frank at 125. These kids are getting good coaching all the way through the program now.”
Of the eighth graders, two lightweights, Lucas Escobar and Drew Harvey, the latter a Pierson student, have come to the notice of the high school’s coaches, who had few contenders in the lightweight divisions this past winter.
The tournament in Clarksville is a Mid-Atlantic regional Amateur Athletic Union qualifier. Russo will take about 10 competitors there, including Kevin Schaefer, 37, a former East Hampton star, who is to wrestle for the last time in the masters (over-30) division. There will also be open (30-and-under), intermediate, high school, and scholastic divisions at that tournament, Russo said.
Other tournaments on the horizon are qualifiers for the Empire State Games and for the state’s freestyle championships. To get ready, the Russos are overseeing East Hampton Town-sponsored training in the freestyle, Greco Roman, and scholastic styles at the high school’s wrestling room this month, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8 p.m.
“There are no holds from the waist down in Greco-Roman,” Russo said in reply to a question. “In freestyle you can use your legs. It’s more like judo. Very high scoring. If your back touches the mat, it’s a pin. It’s all about position and movement. It’s good for high school wrestlers to learn. You can’t be sloppy. You can score from the bottom, and you also get points for altitude on your throws. The moms should be scared.”