Warrior Youth Wrestling Classic Emerges as Premier CT Wrestling Tourney

This past Sunday, the Wilton Youth Wrestling Club hosted the second annual Warrior Youth Wrestling Classic in cavernous Zeoli Fieldhouse to a packed house of wrestlers from 22 clubs and fans from around the Tri-state area.  The Warrior tournament has rapidly become one of the premier youth wrestling events in the area with participation this year soaring nearly 20% to 358 wrestlers and more than 650 individual bouts.

The Wilton contingent of wrestlers from grades 2 to 8 consisted of 37 wrestlers with widely varying levels of experience.  The Warrior contingent took home a slew of medals including Gold medals by Dante Dierks, Max Bevilacqua, Luke Pagano-Walley, Maclan McGovern, Jacob Robb, Will Maggio, Nicholas Rende and Finn McGovern.  Silver medalists were Andrew Prackup, Joseph McGuire, Daniel Polishan, Ryan Leung, Ben Leung, Jimmy Luce, David Sylvester, Evan Helman, Chip Hulse, Griffin Morris, Dominic Caratozzolo, Max Mannino, James Martin and Barrett Brown.  Bronze medals were won by Charlie Fisher, Caleb Forland, Jack Stanzione, Kieran McGuire, Michael DiCostanza, Ethan Helman and Liam Pearsall. 

Compared to other area tournaments, which are generally held in cramped quarters where mats are stuffed together with little room for spectators and waiting wrestlers, the Wilton Classic is held in spacious Zeoli Fieldhouse at Wilton High School.  This year's tournament featured six mats with ample room for maneuver.  Electronic scoring, which is far superior to the traditional, complicated paper-based system used at other tournaments, was provided by Kap Wrestling.