With a young team and a young coach, the Terrapin wrestling team is slowly improving.
The Terps (2-7-1, 0-3 ACC) have suffered many injuries in a season geared toward individual performances rather than team dual matches.
“The whole idea this year is to get individuals into the NCAA tournament,” second-year coach Pat Santoro said. “It’s part of the moving process.”
The moving process Santoro talks about has and will include losses: tournament losses, nonconference losses and ACC losses. The Terps have not won a conference match in their two years under Santoro.
However, Santoro has been patient and is pleased thus far with the team’s improvement.
“This is a big step from last year,” Santoro said. “The team is hungry to compete and that’s a good sign of unity.”
Junior co-captain Jason Gribschaw has spent most of the season sidelined by injury, but that has not set back the Terps as much as injuries to senior heavyweight Barry Stein and sophomore heavyweight David Blais. Neither team member has been able to wrestle, at great cost to the team.
The two heavyweights’ injuries have forced the Terps to forfeit six points in each match. There have been two occasions when the Terps could have won if they had a heavyweight wrestling — a 23-18 loss at Duke and an 18-18 tie against Virginia Military Institute.
The lack of a heavyweight has presented the Terps with a unique mindset during each match. The team goes into each match knowing it must be ahead by at least seven points before the forfeited heavyweight match. It is an unusual situation that the team has tried to make the best of.
“It definitely hurts us and it’s something we just can’t control,” Santoro said. “We just have to compete the best that we can.”
The Terps’ best wrestler this season has been 165-pound junior Jason Kiessling. He has a dual match record of 6-3 overall and 2-1 in the ACC. Kiessling defeated No. 20-ranked Chris Stith of Virginia Tech last weekend.
Last season Kiessling was voted as an alternate for the NCAA championships and seems to be on his way to the tournament this year.
Along with Kiessling, sophomore Charlie Pinto has gained recognition. Pinto (3-3, 1-1) has wrestled under the 141-pound weight class and has shown steady improvement. Santoro says Kiessling and Pinto are standouts who are just beginning to gain national exposure.
“[Pinto and Kiessling] both believe in themselves and they’re going to be hard to beat,” Santoro said.
The rest of the young Terp squad will learn from Pinto and Kiessling as they look to make a mark on the national level.
The Terps will be home Saturday at Comcast Center Pavilion for dual matches against Duquesne and UNC-Greensboro.
