Valley’s Hutcherson has sights set on trip to Hershey for state tournament

By: HSSN Staff
Tuesday, December 11, 2018 | 8:06 PM

Noah Hutcherson was going through a test the weekend of the PIAA individual wrestling championships last March, but it was the standardized version instead of the physical one he wanted.

Denied his first trip to the Class AA state tournament, Hutcherson instead took the SATs the Saturday of the PIAA finals, as Valley teammate and training partner David Schuffert earned a seventh-place medal at heavyweight. He hopes to end the season this spring on a mat at the Giant Center instead of at a desk in a Valley classroom.

“I have to make it there,” said Hutcherson, who added he would have gone to Hershey to at least work with Schuffert if it weren’t for the SATs.

The 170-pound Hutcherson had his most successful season yet as a junior, winning 40 bouts and finished fifth at the WPIAL Class AA championships to advance to the PIAA Class AA Southwest Regional for a second consecutive season.

There, he dropped his first match in a one-point decision and after a brief reprieve in the consolation bracket, ultimately missed out on making his first trip to the state tournament.

“I just wasn’t pushing myself as hard as I could have,” Hutcherson said. “I could have been a lot better than I was at the end of the year if I pushed myself.”

Hutcherson has just one more chance to make it to Hershey, and plenty of motivation to boot. But he knows it will take more than that.

“(It’s about) just working hard, focusing on the basics and taking it one match at a time,” Hutcherson said. “I used to look ahead of time at brackets.”

It can be difficult for Hutcherson to avoid looking ahead, he admitted. He also is working on the confidence he needs to compete against the top wrestlers in the WPIAL, region and state, something else he struggled with in the past.

“He needs to believe he can beat anyone,” said Valley coach Dane Johnson, a three-time state champion during his wrestling career at Shady Side Academy. “That’s the mindset he needs to go into each and every match. That’s where we’re at with him: to believe it. Sometimes I feel he pumps himself up, but we were talking the other day on whether he actually believes when he gets out there. There’s a difference between acting like that and really believing it.”

Hutcherson has the physical tools to compete with every wrestler he faces, with plenty of speed and strength that improved over his high school career. He also is coming off a second consecutive football season of double-digit sacks, so it stands to reason he has a good takedown ability, as well. And Hutcherson displays more maturity and level-headedness on the mat after struggling with frustration in the past.

So now it comes down to belief.

“If I have a strong mentality, I can beat anybody,” Hutcherson said. “It’s something that’s developed along the way. I was weak-minded. Dane’s helped me out a lot with that.”

Hutcherson focused his offseason training on pushing himself, wrestling live more and ramping up his conditioning workouts: “During treadmill sessions I’m sprinting, just pushing myself. I used to just jog, go through the motions,” he said.

During Valley practices Hutcherson works with Schuffert, who’s 90 pounds heavier, and Travis Lasko, who’s about 50 pounds lighter. The dichotomy allows Hutcherson to work on both his strength and speed.

The Valley senior placed second at his first competition of the season, the Eastern Area Invitational Wrestling Tournament. He won his first three matches before getting pinned by Kiski Area’s Nick Delp, a defending WPIAL Class AAA champion, in the final.

“It was an all right tournament,” he said. “I didn’t wrestle my match there. I didn’t wrestle how I usually wrestle, and I got pinned. It’s just a lesson learned, really. I took out (of it) that I have to work on the little things a lot more. There’s people out there a lot better at the little things than I am, and in that case, (Delp) is right now.”

Johnson believes the loss will prove positive for Hutcherson in the long run, maybe beginning this weekend when Valley competes at the Panther Holiday Classic at Mount Aloysius. Derek Brown, the 170-pounder for host Penn Cambria, finished sixth in the state last season.

“For Noah, it’s good to start the season by making the championship because for him, I think besides the Mercer tournament, this was probably his second championship in high school,” Johnson said. “So he’s not used to that, and that’s good. I expect him to be in championships this year, and be challenged. It’s good to get a kid like Delp to challenge him right now. It’s good he got to take a loss like that, and it really got to show him things he can work and improve on, really things he can do to beat an elite wrestler like Delp. That’s the guys you need to challenge yourself against.”

Doug Gulasy is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Doug at dgulasy@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dgulasy_Trib.

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