Bedford wrestling holds off Alvirne

HUDSON – Bedford High School wrestling coach Bob Benincasa knew that Wednesday night’s dual match against Alvirne was going to come down to the final three matches.

Before the action started, Benincasa told the wrestlers that would be going early, they needed to battle for six tough minutes to take pressure of those final three.

The Bulldogs did just that, going up 18-0 before the Broncos came back to tie the match with three matches to go. Bedford regrouped and won two of three to take the match 36-30.

With the match tied 27-27, Bedford’s Jake Valeri defeated John Plant, 5-2, at 120 pounds, and Colin Perras got the Bulldogs another win at 126 by pinning Alvirne’s Ben Katsohis to give Bedford the cushion it needed. The Broncos made the final a little closer when Kraig Hoag scored four points in the final 10 seconds to beat Ben Gilman 8-6 at 132, the last match of the night.

“We knew that going in, that the dual meet was going to come down to those last three matches,” Benincasa said. “We needed everyone else to do their job and to make it as easy as possible for those three. There are a couple of things we talk about and one of those is being tough for six minutes.

“We looked real tough. In our sport, sometimes if you’re the tougher one, you can just gut out a win, and we saw that in a couple of spots. But at the same time, we have a lot more to do.”

Despite the loss, Alvirne coach Tom Jackson was pleased with the way his wrestlers performed, especially after the Broncos fell behind early.

“At the beginning, I was a little disappointed because the score kept piling on, but as we went on, I was pretty happy for the first meet of the year,” he said. “We have a lot of guys who haven’t wrestled before. All of a sudden, we started catching up, so I was pretty pleased.”

The coach also hoped that some of the wrestlers who lost on Wednesday will use it as motivation.

“We had a few guys lose who, it probably shook them up a little,” Jackson said. “It’s a good starting point. We’re going to have to step it up though if we want to have an impact both as a team and as individuals.”

The match started with what Benincasa was looking for – a tough six minutes. Bedford’s Josh Belz jumped out to a 7-0 lead at 138, but Brendan Smith picked up five points in the third period to make it interesting. Belz held on for a 7-5 win.

The Bulldogs got pins from Chris Conery (145) and Ben Miller (152), a freshman who was wrestling in his first varsity match.

“I was real excited for Ben Miller,” Benincasa said. “He’s been doing great in the preseason and I called on him to respond. He went out there and got a huge pin for the team. That was a huge match for the dual meet. Without his win, the points are backwards.”

Sam Kollmorgan added a 7-0 win over Evan Bowen at 160 to put Bedford up 18-0 just four matches into the meet. But the Broncos won five of the next seven matches to tie it up.

Alvirne’s Evan Manning (170) and Patrick Drouin (220) both recorded pins while Taylor Thyne (106) jumped out to a 9-1 lead over Jacob Hall and held on for an 11-6 win. The Broncos also got two forfeits, something that didn’t happen too often for Alvirne a year ago and shows how the number of wrestlers has increased.

“Usually we’re the team coming and giving up 20 or 24 points and that makes it tough,” Jackson said. “This is my first year here where we’ve got real good numbers and it helps us in the practice room. It’s encouraging for the program.”

With the meet tied 27-27, Valeri got out to a 3-0 lead on Plant and withstood the Alvirne wrestler’s rally in the third period to give Bedford a three-point lead. Perras then needed just 47 seconds to pin Katsohis to put the match out of reach.

“The match is going to come back around to Valeri, Perras and Gilman, and we need to make it as easy on them as possible,” Benincasa said. “The way we need to do that is we need to have kids go out there and survive. We need everybody to wrestle that six tough minutes, that’s been our identity. We showed that and that was important.”