Prior national champions face off on bench

When the Pitt wrestling team opened its dual meet season against Lehigh, there was also faceoff… When the Pitt wrestling team opened its dual meet season against Lehigh, there was also faceoff between the last two Pitt wrestlers to win national titles. The meeting didn’t take place on the mat, but instead on the sidelines. Keith Gavin, who won the National Championship last year in the 174-pound weight class for Pitt, joined the Panther coaching staff after graduating in April. Lehigh’s head coach is Pat Santoro, who may be the most decorated wrestler in Pitt history. Santoro won back-to-back national titles in the 1987-88 and 1988-89 seasons while wrestling in the 142-pound division. He still holds the record for most career wins (167), single season wins (49), career pins (43), single season pins (18) and longest winning streak (54 matches). He’s also the only four-time All-American in Pitt wrestling history. ‘He’s a great guy, [a] very good coach and a great wrestler,’ said Gavin of Santoro. ‘I really like the way he approaches wrestling. He’s an intelligent guy. He’s not one of those guys who takes the meathead approach.’ After holding the same position at Maryland for the last five years, Santoro is in his first year at Lehigh, where he was an assistant before his time at Maryland. He was also a four-time member of the U.S. National team and an alternate for the 1996 Olympic squad. ‘I think from a very young age I knew I always wanted to stay involved with wrestling, so [becoming a coach] was a natural fit,’ said Santoro after his Lehigh Mountain Hawks (2-0) defeated Pitt 27-9. And although Gavin took the job as coach, he said he still plans on competing and hopes to make the U.S. National team, which holds its qualifiers in June. And once he’s done competing, he said he thinks coaching is what he’ll do. ‘I really enjoy coaching,’ said Gavin. Although both were successful athletes at Pitt and Gavin is following a similar career path as Santoro, neither really could pinpoint any other similarities between them. Gavin said the biggest similarity he could find was that neither won a state championship in high school. Santoro couldn’t come up with any but had nothing but praise for Gavin. ‘He’s an unbelievable technician,’ said Santoro. ‘He’s good enough to be one of the best in the world.’ Pitt coach Rande Stottlemyer, who coached both wrestlers, came up with a few parallels between the two. ‘They both were very quiet, unassuming kind of guys,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘They crafted their trade very succinctly. They’re great students of the game. When they won they expected to win. You didn’t see them jump up and down and run around the mat.’ Either one of the two might have been able to help the Panthers in his first dual meet of the season Saturday night. Pitt started off strong with a win in the 125-pound match by freshman Chris Albright. With about a minute left in the third period, Albright allowed Lehigh’s John McDonald to escape his hold, giving McDonald one point and tying the match. But mere seconds before the buzzer sounded, Albright recorded a takedown for two points and the 6-4 victory. No. 19 Matt Fisk of Lehigh defeated No. 20 Jimmy Conroy in the 133-pound match by recording a takedown with a little more than 40 seconds to go in the final period to tie the match at three. Another freshman, Tyler Nauman, gave Pitt the lead in the 141-pound match with a 4-1 decision over Seth Ciasulli. ‘They did a nice job,’ said Stottlemyer of the two freshmen. After Lehigh’s Trevor Chinn won against Mark Powell to tie the score at six, the Mountain Hawks went on a run, winning the next five matches. The run began in the 157-pound match when Sean Bilodeau of Lehigh lifted Adam Counterman into the air, slammed him to the mat and quickly covered up the freshman, who tried to shimmy out from under Bilodeau. He didn’t and was pinned. Lehigh then led 12-6. ‘That pin really hurt us,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘That’s the one that really broke our backs. I don’t really think we wrestled well after that, though.’ Senior Zach Sheaffer was the only other Panther to win. In the last bout of the night, the No. 7-ranked heavyweight in the country defeated Lehigh’s Zach Rey 2-1 after accumulating over a minute of riding time. The match took place in the Petersen Events Center, opposed to the Fitzgerald Field House, where the wrestling team normally holds it matches. Stottlemyer said the team occasionally holds meets there. ‘It was a nice crowd,’ he said. ‘It was a great atmosphere. I wish the results were different, though.’