The PIAA’s new 20-man bracket for the state wrestling tournament will have a total of eight wrestlers competing in preliminary-round pigtail brackets.
The winners of those matches will move into the round of 16, while the losers will stay alive and drop into the first round of the wrestlebacks.
With the additional qualifiers, the Northwest Region will now be sending four wrestlers to Hershey, while the Southeast and Southwest regions will be advancing six each and the Northeast Region four.
Class AAA will also be a 20-slot bracket this year with qualifiers coming from five regions. The Southeast Region has been allotted the most with five, while the Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southcentral will be sending four each.
The championships are set for March 5-7 at the Giant Center. The Class AA finals will be held that Saturday at 2 p.m. and the Class AAA finals at 7 p.m.
Meanwhile, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association will be deciding today where the NY state wrestling championships will be held the next three years, choosing between bids from Albany’s Times Union Center and the University at Buffalo.
The tournament is back in Albany this year, where it has been held nine times in the past 11 years, but Buffalo isn’t a stranger to hosting the two-day event.
UB’s Alumni Arena played host to the championships in 2004, the first year the state split the tournament into a two division large-school/small-school format. That was also the tournament Salamanca’s Kane Smith won the first of his two Division II (small-school) state titles.
The state tourney has been held at a number of different sites over the years, including Cornell University, Ithaca College, Utica, Rochester, and one of the more popular sites, the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, which hosted the event 47 times between 1968 and 2003.
The tournament was also held on Long Island three times, most recently at the Nassau Coliseum in 2006, a site that proved widely unpopular to wrestling fans outside of Section 11.
This year’s championships will be held Feb. 27-28. The Division I and Division II finals will be held at the same time on two separate mats that Saturday at 6 p.m.
In another mat note of interest, Cornell University head coach Rob Koll recently notched his 250th milestone win.
Under Koll’s direction, the Big Red, off to a 10-1 start this year, has captured 15 Ivy League titles, crowned 11 national champions and achieved 52 All-Americans and 46 individual Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association champions. The Big Red has had at least one individual NCAA champion in six of the last seven years.
Cornell’s lone loss this year came 27-9 to Missouri.
A native of State College, Pa., and a former PIAA state champion, Koll is the school’s career leader in wins with a 254-81-5 record, including 82-14-1 (.843) over the last six years. He surpassed Jimmy Miller’s mark of 203 dual meet victories in 2011.
Koll is the son of the late Bill Koll, the former Penn State wrestling coach, and the brother of former Ridgway High coach Chris Koll.
While college wrestling isn’t a big draw in the area, there was an intriguing north vs. south matchup last Thursday involving the only two regional programs.
Alfred State, which has attracted a number of former Big 30 matmen over the years, got its first win of the season with a tight 24-22 decision over Penn State-DuBois. The Pioneers, who won five of the 10 matches contested, improved to 1-7.
DuBois, coached by Matt Park, is now 9-3, going 3-1 this past weekend at the PSU-Fayette Duals. The Lions’ roster includes seven District 9 wrestlers: Nate Rodgers (Otto-Eldred/Oswayo Valley), Brett and Jake Himes (Ridgway), Andrew Bigley (Clarion), and Ty Haines and Logan Shirey (Redbank Valley).
The Lions will be competing on Sunday at the Jamestown Community College Open.
Alfred State, headed by first-year coach Paul Reid, has a roster that includes four former Big 30 All-Star wrestlers in Portville’s Ryan Thierman, Olean High’s Drew Marra, and Fillmore’s Ryan and Cody Marriott. Also at ASC are Wellsville’s Brad Haggerty and Franklinville’s Pat DeFoe.
(Tom Roof, a sports writer for the Times Herald, can be reached at troof@oleantimesherald.com)
