Wrestlers place three in upcoming NCAAs

The Penn wrestling team put together its best performance in recent years at the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships, held March 3-4 at Navy. And it was disappointed with the results. The Quakers finished fifth among the 14 EIWA schools with 81 points, only one point behind rival Cornell but well behind champion Lehigh, which scored 124 points. Fifth place was an improvement on Penn's sixth-place finish at Easterns last year. The Quakers also placed six wrestlers in the top six of their weight classes, matching the team's previous best effort in 1993, and they had three wrestlers qualify for the NCAA Championships this Thursday through Saturday in Iowa City. That matched the number sent to Nationals last year. On the surface, the results looked to be pleasant ones for Penn. Everyone else seemed to think so. But coach Roger Reina and his team were not too excited. "There were a lot of people coming up to us, telling us, 'Hey, great job, the program's really coming along, you guys are really becoming competitive,' " Reina said. "That's what we're hearing from the outside, but I think it's clear to us on the inside that we had higher expectations and fell short of those." It is a measure of how much Penn wrestling has improved in recent years that one of the team's best-ever showings at Easterns left it unsatisfied. "Two years ago, when we also finished fifth in Easterns, I think everybody was real happy and felt like we had accomplished a great thing," Reina said. "It's just a sign that our expectations are higher and our goals are higher that we come out with the same placing and more points but just don't feel as good about that performance." But Reina noted Penn did not underachieve by any means. "I don't want to give the impression that the tournament was some kind of complete failure, because clearly it wasn't," Reina said. Not with three NCAA qualifiers. Senior Gary Baker, senior Gonz Medina and sophomore Brandon Slay will be making to trip to Iowa. Baker, ranked 15th in the country, finished third at 118 pounds, while Medina defeated the tournament's fourth and second seeds to take third at 142. Slay, who is ranked 15th in the country at 167 pounds, finished second. The Quakers entered the tournament with high hopes and high expectations -- and early on they lived up to them. After the first round Penn was tied for first. But then the Quakers lost several close matches, and things started to come apart. "In that quarterfinal round, that's when we lost some real heartbreakers," Reina said. "The momentum we had early on started to fade." Still, some wrestlers performed well for Penn. Junior Clinton Matter tore cartilage in his knee two days before the tournament but still managed to reach the semifinals before losing and finishing sixth. The next step was taken by Baker, Slay and Medina. But not enough Quakers joined them to meet the team's own high expectations.