Rocky Point Wrestling Crushes East Hampton

The Rocky Point Wrestling Team handily defeated East Hampton 59-19 Wednesday evening in a varsity match up.

The Eagles were out to a 53-0 lead before East Hampton's 160-pounder Kelly Kalbacher pulled off a decision victory. East Hampton won the next three matches, including two pins, before dropping the 285-pound match between Rocky Point's Alex Reilly and Kevin Neylon.

Of the nine Rocky Point wins, six were by pin. Senior Matt Ross, who came into the season ranked second in Suffolk County at 145 pounds, showed why, with a decisive pin in the second round of his match against Mike Peralta. Ross had been up 11-0 on points after the first period and secured the pin 1:29 into the second period.

Rocky Point, which moved to 11-3 on the year with the victory, was coming off a second-place finish at the Center Moriches dual meet tournament just before winter break. The victory over East Hampton was the first league win of the year. Head coach Darren Goldstein said he was happy with the way his team performed, and stressed the importance of picking up that first league victory.

Goldstein said the match with East Hampton was a good one for his team, and ended up being a great way to open league play.

"East Hampton is weaker where we're stronger and where they're strong we're also strong," Goldstein said. "Where they're the strongest we're terrible, so they're going to get their wins. But we're not a good match up for them."

East Hampton assistant Joseph Russo agreed. "Our lightweights really took a beating," he said. "But we knew when we got up to 160 we would stop the bleeding."

East Hampton was also forced to forfeit matches at 125 and 135 pounds because they didn't have a competitor.

Goldstein, whose team was New York State Champions in 2010, is happy with the way his squad has begun the year and does not expect any type of let down.

"Even now when we have an off year compared to last year, we still have some top-notch wrestlers all along the way," he said. "Even our non-top-notch guys are still hard-nosed athletes. I was satisfied from that perspective today."

The other Rocky Point pins were secured at 96 pounds by C.J. Archer, 112 by Connor O'Gallagher, 130 by Nick Loscalzo, and 140 by Vincent Loscalzo.

While he's happy with his team's progress toward the middle of the season, Goldstein said he's not yet fully satisfied.

"We look to get a little bit better tomorrow than we were today," he said. "We're a little better today than we were yesterday and we'll keep our nose to the grindstone and see what we can do about getting some people upstate, which is the name of the game in wrestling."