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The Hampton Bays wrestling team experienced what it hopes to see more of this season at its annual Doc Fallot Memorial Tournament on Saturday—improvement.
A year ago almost to the date, the Baymen went 2-2 at their host dual-meet formatted tourney, but this past weekend, with a full year of experience under many of the returning wrestlers’ belts, they went 3-1. After defeating North Babylon, 91-0, in its morning match, Hampton Bays defeated Amityville, 63-24, defeated East Hampton, 67-12, and then suffered its only loss to St. John the Baptist, 41-20—St. John’s went 4-0 on the day.
Hampton Bays head coach Mike Lloyd said that after tough non-league matches against a Division I school in Commack and a former Division I school in Elwood/John Glenn, who dropped down to Division II/League VII for the first time this season, he likes where his team is at early on.
“The non-league matches were tough, but the plan for the season was to diversify the competition we were going to see and give everyone a chance to battle at their unique level,” he said. “After two tournaments, and a lot of hard work in practice, the guys are starting to put it all together. We also had three to four kids win their first matches of the season on Saturday and for some of my newest wrestlers, their first wins ever. That morale boost should help us through the holidays and give us what we need to take on our upcoming league competition.”
Willy Kraus (126 pounds) and Joe Gaudiello (170) each went undefeated in their four matches on Saturday. Kraus won two of his matches by forfeit, but he pinned one opponent in 56 seconds and defeated another by technical fall. Gaudiello pinned two of his opponents, won a close 2-0 decision and won another by forfeit.
River Orlando (132) and Nick Corredor (138) each went 3-1 on Saturday. Orlando’s only loss came in a sudden-victory overtime match against St. John’s Stephen Crisci. Corredor won two of his matches by pin. Michael Bacuilima, Kevin McNamara and Nick Morea each grabbed their first varsity victories.
“At this point, I feel that all of the kids have started to fine tune their wrestling,” Lloyd said. “They’ve shaken off the rust and are working toward their individual areas of improvement.
“We’ve talked to the kids in the room about goal setting,” he continued. “Creating short term goals and setting a goal for the season. We’ve challenged them to continuously evaluate those goals, and once they’ve achieved them to then set another and another. We have asked them to physically write them down and hang them up at home, whether it’s over their bed, on the mirror in the bathroom, wherever. The idea is to remind themselves of what they want because visualization and desire to achieve are just as important in wrestling as skill and strength.”
The Baymen opened their Division II/League VIII season this week with a dual-meet on Wednesday at Babylon and will host Center Moriches on Friday at 4:30 p.m. They’ll be at Northport’s Holiday Duals on December 28 before heading to Southampton on January 2 for a dual-meet against the cross-town rival Mariners at 4:30 p.m.
Drew Budd, Sports Editor on Dec 18, 2018