Rocky Point Wrestling Tops Rival Shoreham-Wading River, 49-21

Despite the snowy conditions that caused the cancelation of other events at Shoreham-Wading River High School Friday afternoon the wrestling rivalry between the Wildcats and the Rocky Point Eagles went on. It took a little extra time for the Eagles to travel the nearly four miles between the two schools, but once they got there they were ready to wrestle. The defending state champs unneeded the Wildcats 49-21 in front of an energized crowd.

"I've been around Rocky Point  and Shoreham-Wading River match ups on both sides. I coached at Shoreham-Wading RIver at one time," said Eagles Coach Darren Goldstein.  "There's nothing like it here on the north shore. The crowd is always packed. It's a natural rivalry and Shoreham-Wading River coaches are actually people I grew up with. A lot of our kids have wrestled with each other and are in the kid club with them now."

It was all business as the first match at 112 pounds got underway. The Wildcats excited the crowd when T.J. Fabian secured a pin over Rocky Point's Connor O'Gallagher. It was all downhill from there though, as Rocky Point won the next six match ups, four of them by pin. Of those six match ups, two of them stuck out in Goldstein's head.

"I really liked the efforts of my two captains, Sam Swatzapfel and Matt Ross," he said. "Both wrestled very accomplished Shoreham wrestlers and both beat them very handily. I was very happy with both of those guys."

By the time Shoreham's Joe Bennett secured a 5-3 decision at 152 the Eagles had jumped out to a 30-9 lead.

The victory moved the Eagles to 2-0 in league play and 12-3 overall, but Coach Goldstein said his program is not always worried about the team record.

"All the league wins are important, but our mantra in our program has always been the individual wrestlers getting to their goals," he said. "The team stuff kind of takes care of itself if the individual wrestlers are meeting their goals. You put a lot in the match ups for the league tittle but ultimately winning the state championship is what we're looking for."

Shoreham Head Coach Joe Condon was brief yet congratulatory in his remarks about the match. "They have a good team and some solid wrestlers," he said. "They outwrestled us in more matches than we outwrestled them. I give them credit."

In the end the victory pushes the Eagles toward another league title and furthers the progression of many of their individual wrestlers, on top of securing some bragging rights. 

"What it amounts to is it's a great rivalry and you always have to be up for a match," Goldstein said. "I think that my team came ready to wrestle. We changed the lineup a little bit and put some different guys in, and I think everybody stood up and wrestled tough in victory and defeat."

The Eagles next match up comes Wednesday against the always-tough John Glenn.  The match is scheduled to begin at 4:00 p.m.