10 from Delco ready for PIAA wrestling championships

HERSHEY — The time has come for 10 Delaware County wrestlers to begin living the dream at the PIAA Class 3A state wrestling championships.

The show starts Thursday at 4 p.m. and runs through Saturday evening in the ubiquitous dungeon they call the Giant Center.

It will be a wrestling first for much of the Delco contingent. Hunter Catka of Sun Valley, who won a title two years ago and placed third last season, Chase Barlow of Strath Haven and Upper Darby’s Keito Shaw are the contestants with state wrestling experience.

But it certainly helps Griffin Hollingsworth and Kevin Puliti of Garnet Valley to have wrestled here at the 3A dual championships in February. You won’t have to tell them where to warm up and weigh in.

“That won’t be a foreign land to them,” Jaguars coach Rocco Fantazzi said. “It will be a place they’ve been in and feel a little more comfortable in. When you go to the Giant Center for the first time it’s intimidating. It’s a big arena. There’s a lot of hype. The best of the best are there. So, hopefully because they’ve been there, they’ve had a taste of that, and they’ll want more of it.”

Dan Tobin, the coach at Interboro, planned to check into the Center Wednesday to get sophomore Domenic D’Agostino acclimated to the arena.

It’s the first time Tobin has taken a Bucs wrestler to states since Eric Thomas in 2015. It won’t be the last time as the program has been energized with youth.

“You just try to get him used to the place where he’s going to be in the big spotlight,” Tobin said. “There’s going to be about 10,000 people there with a lot of eyes on you. Dom has wrestled at big venues. He’s been to Fargo, he’s been to the War At The Shore in Wildwood. He’s been in front of big crowds. But we’re still trying to get him used to it. Sometimes we forget he’s a 15-year-old kid.”

Several of the state qualifiers from Delco have been training together through the weeks. The group includes, among others, Shane McAdams of Haverford, Strath Haven’s Chris Barlow and Gabe Federico, Keito Shaw and Julienne Laventure of Upper Darby and even James Lledo of Lower Merion.

It’s hardly a coincidence that many of the state qualifiers have been wrestling each other for weeks.

Another benefit of the Delco practice get-togethers is the camaraderie.

“I really like that aspect of it,” McAdams said. “It’s more than just wrestling. I’ve made some good friends from it. People that I’m going to know after this is over.”

When that group wasn’t practicing, they were talking about the rumblings they’d heard from other regions in the state. It seems the outsiders have little regard for District 1 wrestlers.

“The other regions are going to look at us as like the weaker group,” McAdams said. “Like we have something to prove. Us being there together practicing as the District 1 guys kind of made us feel like a team. I think we do have something to prove. But I’m just going to do what I’ve always done. I don’t really care about the rankings or the seedings. I just want to wrestle. I think a lot of the guys in our district have that same mindset.”

There is no shortage of story lines. Catka, wrestling at 285, could become the first Delco wrestler to go undefeated and win a state championship since Brian Kennerly of Upper Darby did so at 220 pounds in 2016-17.

A senior, Catka also could become the first Delco grappler to win two state titles.

Catka’s younger brother, Ryan, showed he belonged in states as he dominated the competition at 195 pounds to win the Southeast Regional.

And of course, there’s always a wrestler who gets red hot. That happened last year at the Giant Center with John Crawford, who won his first two matches in spectacular fashion at 160 pounds before morphing into a sixth-place finish.

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Haverford’s Shane McAdams works on top against Owen J. Roberts’ Austin Boaman in a 5-1 win last week at the PIAA Class 3A Southeast Regional championships last weekend. McAdams qualified for the PIAA Class 3 championships for the first time in his career. (Nate Heckenberger/For MediaNews Group)