Injury forfeits mask otherwise close match

It wasn't a win — but, barring forfeits, it was the Tigers' closest meet in over a year.

The Princeton wrestling team opened up its dual meet season with a 32-16 loss to the Duquesne Dukes last weekend. While the deficit seems large, the Tigers suffered two forfeits as freshman 149-pounder Justin Spain and 184-pounder Anthony Salerno nursed a partially torn hamstring and a broken foot, respectively. Ignoring those losses, the score was a much more respectable 20-16.

"Wrestling has the second highest injury rate next to football, and this is a big problem when you don't have a lot of depth," head coach Chris Ayres said.

Freshman 125-pounder Tony Comunale, junior 165-pounder Alex Enriquez, sophomore 197-pounder Zach Morse and senior 285-pounder Sam Ritter notched wins for the Tigers, while sophomore 133-pounder Nikhil Pereira, sophomore 141-pounder Jeff Kirchick, junior 157-pounder Aaron Casp and freshman 165-pounder Travis Erdman were defeated in their matches.

Comunale notched a 7-5 comeback victory in overtime against Duquesne's Jonathan Bittenger, who was an NCAA qualifier last year and was Duquesne's best wrestler. The win added to Comunale's already impressive resume, which includes a first-place finish at the Central Jersey Open and two wins at the Nittany Lion Open.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, Pereira's loss to Jayk Cobbs and Kirchick's loss to Brad Shrum led to an 11-3 deficit, and Princeton's forfeit in the 149-pound bracket made the score 17-3. Casp's loss to Cody Midlam in the 157-pound bracket left the Tigers looking at a daunting 23-3 score.

"We knew the match was going to be tough and that we'd have to get some bonus points and not give any up. We ended up getting some, but also giving up some," Ayres said.

Despite the early deficit, however, Princeton's heavier wrestlers battled back.

First, Enriquez earned an 18-6 major decision over Duquesne 165-pounder Ryan Sula, bringing the team score to 23-7. Erdman's hard-fought loss to Scott Black in the 174-pound bracket dropped the score to 26-7, and a forfeit in the 184-pound division resulted in a 32-7 deficit.

But Morse's defeat of Duquesne wrestler Dave Mitchell in the 197-pound bracket and Ritter's pin of Matthew Richardson brought the final result to 32-16.

While the score looked lopsided, the Tigers ended up winning four of the eight individual matches played.

Looking to this weekend, the Tigers have the tough task of facing SUNY-Binghamton and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Binghamton, N.Y., on Saturday. Two of Binghamton's wrestlers were ranked 20th nationally in the Intermat preseason rankings, while the Mariners boast seven wrestlers who were ranked in the preseason and a freshman class ranked fourth in the nation by Intermat.

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The Tigers, though, do not anticipate doing anything special to prepare.

"There won't be any major changes this week," Ayres said. "We're just going to keep learning from each match and focus on getting better each week. One area that we have to improve in is the bottom position — the position in which one seeks to escape from underneath one's opponent — because we got rode to a couple of losses. But other than that, things will be the same as usual."

It will be tough for the Tigers to recover from a hard-fought dual meet and prepare themselves for two more meets on only six days rest. But if Princeton really is as tough and gritty as it has appeared over the last couple of weeks, a successful Saturday may be well within reach.