Three Bethlehem Catholic wrestlers capture PIAA Class AA state titles

Zeke Moisey has had his
dad in his corner his
whole life but seeing him in the corner of the
mat for his 9-3 title clinching bout over
Schuylkill Valley's Joshua
Giorgio was unexpected.

"I did not know," Moisey said
when asked if he was
aware his father would be in the corner. "I
came down and he was all dressed
up and that got me pretty pumped up and excited to perform for him."

It was just
one of the many celebrations at the 2014 PIAA
Class AA Wrestling
Championship. Moisey,
along with Bethlehem Catholic teammates Luke
Karam and Jake Riegel, struck gold in front of
the 5,871 in attendance at the Giant Center.

"Mr. Karam and I talked about it last
night, he asked me if I'd like to and I said
'I'd love to,'" Moisey's
father Scott said. "It's
a great honor. After all he's been through, I just
wanted to share it with him."

"It's been an amazing road, I had a better year than I could
have ever expected," Mutton said. "At the
beginning of the year, the goal was to bring a
medal home, then as the season
went on, state gold seemed
realistic. Just
being in the finals is
an accomplishment."

Pius X junior Michael Comunale (145, 37-6) also
took home an eighth-place medal after a cracked rib forced him to forfeit his
final bout.

The nine Golden Hawk medalists
shattered the previous
single-season
program best of six and breaks
the previous record by a Class
AA coverage-area school when seven
Wilson Area wrestlers medaled in 2002.

Becahi won the team tournament going away with 138½ points, besting
Brookville's 77½. In the process, they set
a new all-time PIAA record by eclipsing Wilson's 2002 132- point Class
AA record and the 137½ points
Northampton put up in 2000.

"I'm thrilled," Bethlehem Catholic head coach Jeff Karam said
after the team collected their third consecutive
team championship title. "You couldn't have
wrote it any better. You'd like to win every match you can but that's
not going to happen and I'll tell you what, we won far more than we lost.

"A lot of guys stepped up
and are walking out of Hershey with a medal.
We have six underclassmen that will be
returning state medalists
and two of them are going to be returning state
champs, so I'm excited about the future and
I'm so proud of these
guys I just
can't say enough."

Senior captain Moisey was
quick to point out that the success
did not come solely from talents of any
individual wrestler.

"People say that coach Karam
is not a good coach, that we come into the
room and we're already these talented wrestlers,"
Moisey said.
"Coach Karam puts us
through practice every single day. Nobody who says
these things
are in our room watching us practice and listening
to what he is doing every single
day. He makes us the wrestlers
that we are."

A two-time runner-up, the West
Virginia University commit had a mountain of
expectations after the four-time medalist lost
in the championship bout the past
two years, but the future Mountaineer handled them with aplomb.

"The only expectations I
need to live up to are my expectations," Moisey
said. "My expectations
were to go out, wrestle the full six
minutes and go after him and I did just
that.

"I had three goals this
year, winning a state title, going undefeated
and getting a Dapper Dan spot and I think I
accomplished all three of those
goals,"

Also achieving that goal was
Luke Karam, the 113-pound sophomore who lost in the finals
last year.

"It means so
much," Luke Karam said. "I'm just
so fortunate and blessed
to have another opportunity to be in the state
finals and hopefully I'll get two more."

The title bout was a
familiar place for Luke Karam (40-2), and opponent Jonathan Gabriel of Bedford
was a familiar face.

"I wrestled him earlier,"
Karam said after his
5-0 title-clinching decision

"I kind of knew what to look out for. I just
stuck to my game plan."

A big part of the game plan was
improving his defense
and his riding ability.

"In the semifinals (Brookville's
Taylor) Ortz was in on some
deep shots
and I just used my defense
to score on him," Karam, said. "I've worked a
lot on top and I felt like I got a lot better on top as
the year progressed."

Of course, having the
experience of being in the final contributed to his
development.

"Last year I felt I held back a little bit, not to take
anything away from Devin Brown. I mean he's a
great wrestler, but I felt I could have been a
little more aggressive
in that match," Karam said. "Today, I thought
I was a bit more aggressive
even though I felt I could have scored a bit
more."

As a freshman, Bethlehem
Catholic's Jake Riegel didn't have the same
experience to draw from in his 106 pound bout
with Bishop McDevitt's
John Pipa, but he wasn't lacking for inspiration.

"Last week, I advanced," Riegel said
of his fifth-place finish
in the Southeast Region, where he lost
to Pipa 4-2. "It was going to be a whole new season
for me this tournament. I'd had two tough
matches, I'd lost
two-in-a-row and in that last one. I was
just going to give it my all because
this is this
is the last chance I've got."

Riegel made the most of his
chances. Entering a scoreless
second period on bottom, he fought off Pipa's
attempts to earn back points,
then escaped before scoring
the takedown that secured his
3-1 decision and sent
him to the top of the medal stand.

"He's tough on top, he's one
of the toughest on the mat in the whole state,"
Riegel said. "He's
one of those kids
if you explode right away he's going to get a
tilt, bring you right back to the mat and work legs.
You've just got to be patient and wait for him
to maybe make a mistake and capitalize on it."

Of course now that Riegel
(29-7) has a gold medal to wear around his
neck, he'll have the knowledge to sustain,
and build upon.

"(I'll) work hard, but also
work smart. Not kill myself,
tapering it down when I needed to and just
getting my head straight," Riegel said.
"Getting my school work done early so
I can relax and have fun, not taking it way too seriously,
have time for other things and everything will
work out."