Warriors faring well despite early losses
BY MIKE WHITE
Staff Writer

PLUMSTED - Despite being saddled with a dual-meet mark of 0-2 heading into last week's Hawk Classic at Manchester High School, New Egypt wrestling coach Kevin English was optimistic the Warriors could put forth a solid showing at the holiday tournament.

Junior Tommy Morton shined at the event, finishing in second place. Morton, who finished with a 36-3 record last year, lost to John Morano of Toms River North in the championship bout.

"He had a pretty good tournament," English said. "It is still really early in the season, but he looked real sharp at times in this tournament. He is coming off a great year last year and we expect him to keep pace with what he accomplished a year ago. He has a lot of potential."

English said Morton ran into a tough opponent in the finals. Morano posted a 6-0 win over Morton to win the individual title at 112 pounds.

"The kid was a very good wrestler," English said. "He was very focused and determined. He was hungry for the victory. Tommy ran into a quality wrestler. Sometimes that's the way it goes in this sport."

New Egypt placed two other wrestlers in the Top 5 as well.

Junior Tommy Carr finished fourth at 130 pounds, while teammate Billy Campbell was fourth at 135.

Carr finished with a 2-2 mark for the event. His draw was extremely difficult and took a physical toll on the junior toward the end of the tournament.

"He probably had the most difficult draw of anybody from our squad in the tournament," English said. "His opening bout was a 4-3 nail-biter and things really never got any easier from there. He hung in there and battled the entire way. You could see the confidence growing in him with every bout he went through."

Carr avenged an early-season loss to Manchester's Chris Boyle by beating his opponent in double-overtime.

"That was an exciting bout," English said. "Just a week ago he lost to the kid. To watch him come in here and beat him a week later was great. It shows the improvement he has made in a short period of time. He is another kid whose confidence continued to grow."

Campbell was the seventh seed and compiled a 3-2 mark for the tournament.

"He did a good job for us," English said. "He got the top seed in the second round and lost but put up a good battle. The kid was never comfortable wrestling him."

Both of the Warriors' dual-meet losses were close. New Egypt suffered a 39-23 loss to Manchester in the season-opener for both teams. However, four of the bouts were decided by four points or less.

"Last year, we wrestled them and they beat us by 40 points," English said. "So to see the improvement in our kids was great. Manchester is a solid program. We had four matched that could have gone either way."

In a 34-30 loss to Clayton, English was slightly disappointed. He felt his squad was the better of the two clubs.

"It definitely wasn't our best day," he said. "We had some bad losses in that meet. The positive is we learned some things that we need to work on. We won't have that happen to us again this year."