Mt. Pleasant’s Pitzer pins his way to Class AA West Super Regional title

By: Greg Macafee
Saturday, March 6, 2021 | 9:39 PM

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Over the past three weeks, Mt. Pleasant 215-pounder Dayton Pitzer has been dominating, and that continued Saturday at the PIAA Class AA West Super Regional tournament.

Pitzer extended his pin streak to 13 in contested matches by pinning all three of his opponents at IUP’s Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex and won his weight class with a 33-second pin of Philipsburg Osceola’s Parker Moore.

“I’m just going out and taking it one match at a time and having fun,” Pitzer said. “I feel good, and I like pinning guys. It’s fun.”

In his first match, Pitzer pinned Brian Deline from Huntingdon Area in 3 minutes, 14 seconds. Then, Pitzer took down Eisenhower’s Cael Black in 54 seconds to punch his ticket to the championship.

Pitzer superb year comes after having to sit out last season while recovering from knee surgery. But now he is heading back to Hershey and looking for his second career PIAA title.

“It feels good to get back there, and I wish I was able to wrestle last year,” Pitzer said. “I’m grateful that I’ve been able to wrestle this year with corona and everything. I feel like I’ve picked up right where I left off, too.”

Burrell’s AJ Corrado (160) also won a title Saturday, but all his wins came by decision. He won his first match in regulation, but the final two matches went to overtime. He defeated Cole Casilio from Johnsonburg with a 3-2 ultimate tiebreaker decision.

Corrado said the way his opponents were wrestling didn’t allow him to open up too much, which is something he is hoping to improve on leading into Hershey.

“I feel like a lot of the kids I wrestled today were so stiff and were in a box, kind of, so it was hard to get in on my offense,” Corrado said. “But that’s the kind of stuff I need to work on because not every kid is just gonna be flying and attacking to open up my re-attacks and stuff like that.”

Burrell’s Ian Oswalt (138) and Cooper Hornack (106) also qualified for the state tournament next weekend by finishing second in their weight classes.

Knoch’s Eli Reese (215) became the second wrestler in school history to qualify for the state tournament.

Greg Macafee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Greg by email at gmacafee@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Tags: Mt. Pleasant