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PIAA Wrestling Championships / Class AA: A perfect ending for Keystone Oaks junior
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Burgettstown's Dan Conley celebrates pin against Danville's Dan Winnie in 215-pound final.

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Anthony Zanetta didn't want to focus on anything other than his title match. He swears that finishing undefeated wasn't on his mind this weekend at the PIAA wrestling championships.

After the Keystone Oaks junior wrapped up a 40-0 campaign with a 9-7 decision against Boiling Springs' Joe Spisak in the 112-pound final yesterday at the Giant Center, he conceded he has been pondering the possibility of a perfect season since about the first period of his first match in December.

"I didn't want to think about it that much going into the [title] match," Zanetta said. "Now that it's done, going undefeated was a real big goal mine, to go undefeated and become a state champion. I came this far. I wasn't going to lose."

Zanetta was the only unbeaten wrestler of the four PIAA champions from the WPIAL in Class AA.

"He has that knack of coming up on top," first-year Keystone Oaks coach Brian Hutchin said. "He's a scrambler, and that allowed him to win that match. This is what he's worked a year and a half for, to be a state champion."

Also winning PIAA Class AA gold medals from the WPIAL were Shady Side Academy's Dane Johnson (125 pounds) and Roman San Doval (189 pounds), and Burgettstown's Dan Conley (215 pounds).

Johnson (49-2), a junior, needed overtime to win the 112-pound championship last season, but systematically dispatched Nick Hodgkins of Wyomissing, 7-2, in a workmanlike performance.

"I felt pretty good. I never felt I was really in danger," Johnson said. "The first period, he was in deep but I fought it off pretty good and felt in control the whole match."

Shady Side Academy boasted two winners for the second consecutive season.

A junior, San Doval (51-7) defeated Jefferson-Morgan's Ethan Virgili, 2-1, in the ultimate tiebreaker (overtime) in the only all-WPIAL final. It was the third high-stakes meeting between the two after facing each other in the WPIAL championship and Southwest regional tournament. They also met in the WPIAL team playoffs, and all four meetings went to overtime.

"We've been talking all week up here," Virgili said. "He's in the same hotel as us. We've wrestled every weekend, so we pretty much knew what to expect."

Virgili had won the most recent meeting before yesterday.

"That gave me tons of motivation coming into this," San Doval said.

"[Winning a PIAA title] almost seems like an impossible feat, but once you get up here [Hershey] and get adjusted to the great talent up here, everything starts rolling for you and it sort of just falls into place."

Conley was dominating in staging the only pin in a Class AA final, taking down Danville's Dan Winnie 3:03 into the match. Conley had three takedowns and led, 8-0, at the time of the fall.

"Every wrestler wants to pin a kid in a match sometimes," said Conley, a senior. "But a pin in the state finals? That's just something that happens in a dream, in a fantasy."

Johnson and San Doval led Shady Side Academy in becoming the first WPIAL Class AA team to win the PIAA Class AA team championship at the individual tournament.

The Indians posted 91 points to second-place Northwestern Lehigh's 62 1/2.

Burrell lost consecutive individual championship matches when Shane Welsh was edged 3-2 by Sharon sophomore Jordan Moss in the 135-pound final and Jordan Shields lost to Gary Pfahler of Chestnut Ridge, 4-3, at 140 pounds.

First published on March 9, 2008 at 12:00 am
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