Defending State Champs Rocky Point Pins East Hampton Wrestlers, 59-16

The varsity wrestling team suffered a tough defeat against defending New York State champions Rocky Point on their gym on Wednesday afternoon, losing the match by a score of 59-19, despite a strong finish from some of the team's heavier competitors.

"Our lightweights really took a beating," assistant coach Joseph Russo said. "But we knew when we got up to 160 we would stop the bleeding."

Kelly Kalbacher was wrestling for East Hampton at 160, and just moments after he stepped onto the mat he started bleeding himself. Once his own bleeding was stopped, Kalbacher powered his way to a convincing decision to help his team.

The next three matches - Cory Pawlukojc at 171, Peter Johann at 189, and Taylor Harned at 215 were all victories for East Hampton.

Pawlukojc's match against Rocky Point's Zekie Yazek was the one that drew the most reaction from the crowd. Yazek held a one point advantage heading into the final period until Pawlukojc scored three points to pull ahead. Yazek was able to score a point and get to standing position to make the score 3-2 with 25 seconds remaining. But Pawlukojc was able to finish the match strong and secure a 5-2 victory.

Head coach Steve Tseperkas knew coming in his team would have a tough time with the defending champions, but thought his team showed improvement. "We have work to do overall," he said. "But our heavyweights came up big. We have some holes in the middleweight and lightweight we need to work on. We're getting better though. Last year they beat us like 66-9, so scoring 19 points today was pretty good."

It didn't help East Hampton's cause that they had to forfeit matches at 125 and 135.

Tseperkas is a former Rocky Point wrestler himself, and his colleague across from him, Darren Goldstein, had good things to say about the East Hampton program.

"East Hampton is still building a program out there," Goldstein said. "Deperkis and the Russo family are doing a great job of building up the people and bringing the kids along. We're a couple of years ahead of them in terms of doing that but it's the same type of program, same type of situation, same size school."

The East Hampton squad will get a chance to get on the winning track in league play when it .