1/20/2010 - Great Night For Wrestling
Joe Gaccione’s gas tank looked perilously close to being on empty.
The High Point junior had just given up a third-period escape to Doug Cornell of Long Branch and the two warriors were headed to overtime knotted at 1-1 in their pivotal match at 145 which essentially would decide the outcome of the match between the two top teams in the state.
In the OT, Cornell, who lost to Gaccione last year 5-3 in Long Branch’s win over the Wildcats on criteria at Rutgers, looked like he had the upper hand and brought Gaccione to the mat.
Gaccione’s hand touched the mat briefly but not enough for referee Vinnie Russo, who along with Roy Dragon were outstanding, to call the takedown. But while the Long Branch fans were howling for two, Gaccione leaned back, spun and put Cornell in a headlock for a five-point move to post a wild and match-saving 6-1 win to cut Long Branch’s lead to 23-21 with one bout left and set off a wild celebration in the High Point stands that I will never forget.
And as every wrestling fan in the state knows by now, the ever-steady Ethan Orr went out in the final bout of the night and registered a 7-0 win over Jake George at 152 and the Wildcats held off a determined bunch from Long Branch 24-23 to maintain their No. 1 ranking in the state by the slimmest of margins.
This match will always be remembered for Gaccione’s heroics in OT, and rightfully so. After losing four matches in the third period to the supremely-conditioned Green Wave, I was thinking this might be it for the Wildcats.
(On a side note, didn’t seem like all the Long Branch kids looked like they just stepped out of the weight room? The contrast was obvious. It was beach muscles against country strength, but for at least one night, country strength ruled.)
But Gaccione summoned the strength and fortitude to hold off the takedown and win the bout. It was like he drew on the strength of all the years he has been around High Point wrestling, which is most of his life.
His uncle is Wildcats head coach John Gardner and his grandfather has been a fixture at High Point wrestling forever. Gaccione also could have looked across the mat in the front row and watched High Point’s first state champion Fred Swanson cheer him on.
It seemed like the entire High Point wrestling community, which is as loyal as a bunch as you will ever find, willed Gaccione to the victory and it just seems fitting that a member of the first-family of High Point wrestling pulled out the biggest win of the night.
“The gym was just crazy,” said Gaccione. “The fans were so loud, it was amazing.”
That it was.
I have covered a lot of sporting events in my day, but High Point’s win is in the top three, and by far, the best wrestling match I’ve ever seen.
Some are calling it the greatest match in state history and I couldn’t argue. Check out Bob Behre’s blog at nj.com and you can read what some of the top wrestling people in the state had to say about the match.
Just the final score alone tells you what a whale of a match it was. The bouts were split 7-7 and there was just one tech fall and one fall. That’s it.
There were two overtime matches and it seemed like every toss-up bout went to the final buzzer. And speaking of overtime, lost in the shuffle a bit was Gavin Donahue’s inspired 2-1 triple overtime win over Paul Tracey at 189.
The win got the Wildcats on the scoreboard and Donahue displayed incredible determination to pull off the victory. Another Donahue, Brennan, also came up big and saved a crucial team point by staying off his back in his tech fall defeat to Andrew Cornell.
It is the little things like that which make a championship team. And also lost in the hoopla was Billy Gould’s surgical-like precision in his pin of Nick George in 1:11 at 112 pounds.
Gould, who sat out the Wildcats’ win over Sussex County rival Kittatinny, was champing on the bit and he came out and overwhelmed George to keep the Wildcats rolling.
If someone would have told me before the match that John Guzzo, Drew Wagenhoffer, Billy Smith and Tom Diviantonio would all lose, I would have ventured to guess that Long Branch was going to make the ride back to the Shore a victorious one.
But this is what makes this High Point crew so special—they have great depth. Gardner can look to his bench and select a number of wrestlers at different weight classes and the Wildcats don’t skip a beat.
In fact, the very next day, High Point went out and overwhelmed a solid West Milford squad with a lineup that didn’t look anything like the one against Long Branch except for a few exceptions.
The atmosphere at the Long Branch match was electric and the fans have everything to do with that. The host fans were encouraging and well-behaved. And you are not going to find a more knowledgeable group of wrestling fans in the state.
As for Long Branch’s fans, they came into the match with a bad reputation after what happened last year in the Green Wave’s loss to Phillipsburg down at Easton, Pa. But I can tell you, and I was sitting in the Long Branch section, they were terrific.
The only hiccup came during our telecast (and by the way weren’t Bill Rawson and Mike Weilamann outstanding? They were a great listen) when an excitable Long Branch wrestler got in the broadcasters’ way and had something to say about it. But High Point security took care of it as did the Long Branch assistant coaches. No big deal.
And speaking about the Long Branch coaches, you can’t say enough about Dan George and what a class act he was. We talked to him last year after Long Branch nipped High Point last year and he was a very gracious winner.
Well, after suffering a heartbreaking loss, he was just the same. He was proud of his kids and he saluted High Point for being an outstanding program. He was also kind enough, as was Gardner, to come on the Sports Beat live prior to the match.
He told me that he will do anything he can to promote the sport of wrestling. In my opinion, the sport needs more coaches like Dan George. As we say in the sports media business, he gets it.
All in all, what a great night for High Point, its fans and the sport of wrestling. It was a night I won’t ever forget and there probably about 1,000 other fans in attendance that night that won’t either.
MAGIC MARK…Gavin McCarney of Jefferson has dazzled fans on the football field and the basketball court for the last three years for the Falcons. But his effort against Sparta in the Falcons’ 62-59 double-overtime win was one for the ages.
McCarney scored a career-high 39 points and scored his 1,000th career point to boot in a virtuoso performance that won’t be duplicated anytime soon.
McCarney did it all, literally. He rebounded, he blocked shots, he made terrific assists, he handled and he knocked down 6, 3-pointers. But that is just all in a night’s work for the modest McCartney.
He became the 11th boys player to reach 1,000 points at Jefferson, but he said his goal was not to catch Mike Leach, the school’s all-time leading scorer at 1,532 points, but his older sister, Shannon.
Shannon McCarney, currently an assistant for Bridget Jones at Newton, scored 1,209 points for Jim O’Connor before graduating in 2001.
Congrats, Gavin. For as much fun as you have playing sports, the people lucky enough to watch you have just as much.
And for local hoops fans, if you want to see a good old-fashioned shootout, go to Hopatcong Friday night, Jan. 22 and watch McCarney and Matt Tobin of Hopatcong go at it in a battle for first place in the NJAC Freedom Division. It promises to be a thriller.
It will also be a special night as Hopatcong will celebrate 40 years of basketball and the school will honor its 1,000-point scorers and former longtime coach and founder of the boys hoops program, Sussex County Hall-of Famer Rick Fincken.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.
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