Nestor pins, Tarquinio wins in tourney action

Justin Nestor, Pitt’s 165-pound wrestler, is off to a fast start.

He’s won his first five… Justin Nestor, Pitt’s 165-pound wrestler, is off to a fast start.

He’s won his first five matches of the season, including the 165-pound title at the Cornell Body Bar Invitational in Ithaca, N.Y., a week ago.

And he’s done it in dominant fashion.

His first win was an 8-2 major decision over Bloomsburg’s Jason Crawford, while two of his four wins at the tournament – including the championship bout – came by way of a pin.

The two pins give him 31 in his career, good enough for third on Pitt’s all-time pins list, while the undefeated week earned him the Eastern Wrestling League’s Wrestler of the Week honor.

“I think we wrestled a pretty good tournament,” Nestor said. “I look at it as a step toward bigger things.”

Bigger things lie just around the corner for Nestor. His 5-0 start inches him closer to 100 career wins. He currently has 95.

Beating him to that punch, however, was his redshirt senior teammate, 141-pounder Ron Tarquinio.

In his fourth season as a starter for head coach Rande Stottlemyer’s Pitt wrestling team, it was only a matter a time before Tarquinio put his name in the record books.

He earned a third-place finish at the Cornell Body Bar Invitational, capturing his 100th career win as a Panther. With the milestone, Tarquinio became Pitt’s first 100-win wrestler since 2003 when now assistant coach Carl Fronhofer accomplished the feat.

His 103-43 overall record ranks him 11th on Pitt’s all-time wins list, and he’ll look to add on to his total throughout the course of the season.

“It’s important to keep developing your technique through the rest of the season,” he said on PittsburghPanthers.com.

He finished 4-1 in the tournament, locking up the third-place finish with a major decision over Sacred Heart’s Chris Davis.

Three other Panthers placed at the invitational: Mike Ciotti at 133 pounds and 149-pound Joey Ecklof both earned second-place finishes, while Kyle Deliere finished fifth at 184 pounds.

“The effort was outstanding, and the young guys got some great experience,” Stottlemyer said.

Five other Panthers, including Matt Kocher and Keith Gavin who are sitting out of dual matches this year with a redshirt, competed in the East Stroudsburg Open in East Stroudsburg, Pa., last week.

Kocher dominated the event in the 157-pound weight class, winning all six of his matches to capture the title. He used a 3-1 decision over Hofstra’s Mike Parziale to secure the first-place finish.

Gavin won four of his six matches to notch a fifth-place finish after wins against Brent Nowak of the U.S. Military Academy and Lehigh’s Brian Lamay. He defeated Lamay a second time later to lock up a top-five finish.

“The most important thing early in the season is to get a lot of matches in,” Stottlemyer said.

The Panthers (0-1 overall, 0-1 EWL) return to action this weekend when they travel to Las Vegas, Nev., for the Las Vegas Invitational – an invitational tournament that features many of the top teams in the country.

EWL action continues on Jan. 26, when Pitt travels to Cleveland State.