HS Boys Sports Round Up: Wrestling Finals, Basketball & Hockey Tournaments

Wrestling:

Forest Dolby came ever so close to winning the State Open Championship Saturday. Dolby, who wrestles at 135-pounds for Cheney Tech, lost 3-2 in the final to Griswold’s Brandon Walsh and had to settle for second place.

Dolby won the Class M title last week.

Dolby did not allow a point to be scored against him in the open until the final. He began with a pin of Canton’s Brian Fitzpatrick just 25 seconds into the match and followed that with a 1-0 victory over Gilbert’s Alex Smith, who went on to take fifth place in the tournament.

Dolby followed that with a pin of Trumbull’s Benjamin Anderson with 32 seconds left in the match. That set the final meeting against Walsh, whose closest contest before Dolby was a 6-2 win over Hand-Madison’s Jake Savoca in the semifinals.

Somers’ Kenneth Vollaro took third place in the 215-pound class. Vollaro, who dominated the Class S meet, advanced to the semifinals of the tournament with wins over Windham’s Nathan Flemming and Bristol Eastern’s Matthew Piazza. Vollaro preformed well in the semifinals but ultimately lost to Xavier’s Sean Marinan, 3-1.

Vollaro regrouped to beat Masuk’s Eric Tucker, 10-1 to advance to the third-place match where he beat Torrington’s Dean Tsopanides, 9-2.

Basketball:

Windsor will play undefeated Northwest Catholic-West Hartford in the semifinals of the CCC tournament Tuesday at Bulkeley High School. (Hartford Public meets Maloney-Meriden in the semifinal game.) Windsor reached this point with a typically suffocating 50-39 victory over Berlin Saturday in the quarterfinals.

Of course, the Warriors have bigger aspirations than a conference title, those being the top-seed in a stacked Class LL tournament when the CIAC officially announces pairings on Wednesday. Still, the CCC tournament is a rugged dress rehearsal for Mike Fraylon, Andrew Hurd, Egerton Anderson, Scott Sill, Nasean Banks, George Curry and Garey Allen. After all, the state tournament is unlikely to feature back-to-back games as difficult as Northwest Catholic and Hartford Public, which is what Windsor will likely face if it wants to win the CCC.

At the other end of the state tournament spectrum is Tolland (8-12), which qualified with a 74-59 victory over Fermi-Enfield on Friday. The good news for the Eagles, aside from the fact that they qualified after a tumultuous season, is the balance in their scoring against Fermi.

Andrew Roussey, Corey Keane, Taylor Fortin and Kris Strobel all scored in double-figures and if the Eagles can maintain that kind of balance they will be a difficult out even from the bottom of the bracket.

Another thing helping the Eagles is the way the CIAC seeds teams based on record rather than a subjective view of which teams are the strongest.

If the tournament was done like the NCAA Tournament, the Eagles might be looking at game against a team like Weaver-Hartford, whose losses this season are to Hartford Public, Maloney, Manchester and Windsor.

The Enfield boys will be carrying the banner for a town that has been all but left out of the winter post-season. The Raiders reached the quarterfinals of the Class M tournament a year ago, but lost four starters to graduation from that team. They have rebounded this season behind the scoring of Tre Preston and a team that hustles and scraps for every loose ball.

Another interesting team is E.O. Smith, which is currently the No. 8 seed in the Class L tournament. The Panthers do not have a bad loss this season. They dropped games to Middletown, Northwest Catholic, Hartford Public and New Britain. The problem with being the No. 8 seed is you run into the No. 1 seed quickly and this year that seed is Northwest Catholic, which defeated E.O. Smith 63-32 when the teams met in December. The Panthers, who can’t look past a first round game, will be happy the state tournament is not a best of seven and will hope for a one-time upset.

Hockey:

The Tri-Town hockey team, behind the efforts Mike Hanna, Brian Borbas, Justin Locke, Steve Pernal and Billy Chevalier, was one of the first teams to qualify for the Division I state tournament, but now faces an important game Tuesday in West Hartford against Conard. Tri-Town opened the season 9-1, but is just 2-7 since that start and has lost five of its last six.

"We're in a slump and we can't find out way out of it," Tri-Town Coach Paul Dowe said after a loss to Fermi-Enfield two weeks ago.

Since then, his team is 1-3, which is not the way any team wants to enter the tournament. The game against Conard offers Tri-Town a chance to gather some momentum.

The Manchester-Rockville-Stafford hockey team also has an important game Tuesday. The United team, which features Eric Pottinger and Dylan Carpenter, had a six-game win streak snapped Saturday in a 5-4 loss to Rocky Hill-RHAM-Middletown. A win Tuesday against Windsor-East Granby-Avon, will get them restarted for the Division III tournament.