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Senior Bayman Cooper Shay nearly pins Glenn's Luc Angus in the semifinals.
Hampton Bays senior Cooper Shay goes in for a take down of Glenn's Elijah Porpora in the consolation semis.
Hampton Bays senior Cooper Shay nearly pins Shoreham/Wading River's Zack Wilson on the consolation finals.
Hampton Bays senior wrestler Cooper Shay, by all accounts, had a great season. He won a lot of matches, many of them by quick pins. But that, along with a few other variables, may have been what was ultimately his undoing.
Seeded second in the 215-pound weight class at the Suffolk County Division II Championships, held at Mattituck High School on Friday, Shay wound up placing fourth, which is still an achievement, becoming an All-County wrestler for the first time. But for someone who was so dominate, even at the start of Friday’s tournament, it was a little bit of a shocker.
After a first-round bye, Shay pinned his quarterfinals opponent, Babylon’s Adrian Daci, just as time expired in the first round, setting up a semifinal match against Elwood-John Glenn’s Luc Angus, who he had previously defeated earlier this season. Shay had Angus on his back multiple times throughout the match but the Glenn product was able to stave off being pinned each time, prolonging the match, which seemed to work in his favor.
As the match continued, Shay visibly became more and more winded, and eventually he couldn’t go any further and Angus covered him up for a pin with 33 seconds remaining in the match for the upset win. To his credit, Shay wrestled strong in his consolation semifinal match, pinning Glenn’s Elijah Porpora in 3:49, but endurance and stamina appeared to be an issue again in the consolation finals, where Shay was ultimately pinned in 1:10 by Shoreham-Wading River’s Zack Wilson.
“Wrestling outcomes are sometimes a series of factors that aren’t always the most straight forward,” Hampton Bays head coach Mike Lloyd explained. “It’s important to have the skill, strength, proper conditioning and technique, but what we’ve pointed out to the kids is that sometimes it comes down to how bad you want to win. They need to be sure that in every match they leave nothing to chance because your opponent might take the one moment to get the advantage.
“Obviously we had hoped that Cooper would make it further in the tournament, especially since both of the kids that he had lost to he had also wrestled and beat earlier in the season,” he added. “He did take fourth and it’s fantastic for him to finish his senior season as an All-County wrestler. The team was young this year but despite a lot of the difficulties we had to face, COVID related or otherwise, they were all able to grow.”
Lloyd said that on top of Shay not wrestling deep into his matches at all this season, another factor was with the team lacking depth, so he didn’t really have a partner to work with.
“In a typical season we do a lot of mixing of partners and also look to schedule practices with other teams toward the end of a season in order to give kids different ‘looks,’ he explained. “Seeing how different people wrestle not only helps in the defense of certain techniques but also builds stamina. Attempting to avoid potential quarantines, many schools were avoiding extra comingling where it wasn’t necessary, but this can then also become a disadvantage.
“Cooper’s options in the room were slim, but I think the bigger detriment was not taking advantage of some of the opportunities during the season to lengthen his matches,” Lloyd continued. “In counties, matches tend to be more competitive and run longer which is difficult if you’ve not had a lot of chances to run through a full six minute match. We encouraged Cooper to do this when possible but it didn’t happen as much as we would have liked.”
