The 2006-2007 Loyola Dons Wrestling Team

March 23, 2007 The Baltimore Sun released their all Baltimore County teams and Colin Schuster was named 1st team at 135lbs, Jesse Perseghin at 119 and Ben Garbart at 189 wer named to the 2nd team.

March 10, 2007 Congratulations to Owen Duffy for defeating the 1a2a state champ Eddie Digman in the Senior All-Star Classic. It was an exceptional year for Owen and all of the Loyola wrestlers.

To keep you checking in from time to time on the forum will be some games and contests and announcements. First up is an NCAA Tournament challenge for picking the winners in the NCAA basketball championship. There is also a fantasy baseball league you should sign up for. We will draft that when we fill the league sometime before April 1st and probably after a Maryland Mean Machine practice.

March 6, 2007 Two Loyola seniors will be representing the private school all-stars in the MSWA All-Star Classic Thursday night at River Hill High School. Jesse Perseghin 119, and Owen Duffy 285 will be on the private school team that takes on the top seniors from the 1a/2a and 3a/4a public schools. Wrestling starts at 6:30.

The Baltimore Sun final wrestling rankings have also been published and Loyola is ranked #15. Inexplicably we are behind John Carroll #11 and Broadneck #13 who were both beaten by the Dons this year. Colin Schuster is the #3 ranked 135lb wrestler.

February 25. 2007 In a very busy two weeks Loyola completed it's season by finishing 9th in the MIS tournament and 56th (of 128 teams) at the National Prep tournament at Lehigh University.

The MIS State tournament featured a Don in the finals for the second year in a row as Senior captain Jesse Perseghin once again squared off against Tyler Scarinzi. Although he came out on the short end of the match his back to back MIAA and MIS second place finishes were a nice conclusion for his years of wrestling. As a team at States Loyola had a second place from Perseghin at 119, a third from Owen Duffy at 285, a fourth from Ben Garbart at 189, a sixth from Danny Smith at 171, and a seventh from Colin Schuster.

The National Prep tournament at Loyola saw Loyola take the 5 state place winners and return with an All -American in Owen Duffy who placed 8th. Owen finished a fine career with several loyola team records. His final season won loss record of 51-15 is the most wins in School history. His 24 pins on the year tie him with Anthony Filleti for the team lead.

February 15, 2007 At the 2007 MIAA championships Loyola crowned it's first champion in 6 years in Colin Schuster at 135lbs. Colin is Loyola's second overall MIAA champion. As a team Loyola finished in 6th place and placed 8 of 14 wrestlers. In addition to Colin's championship senior Jesse Perseghin finished in 2nd place after losing a close finals match to Curley's Tyler Scarinzi. Other Loyola wrestlers who placed were Bobby Almon 5th, Gus Moreno 6th, Cameron Miller 5th, Ben Garbart 3rd, Hugh Shepard 6th, and Owen Duffy 4th. Photo's from the tournament are available here. Schuster and the team also made the Towson Times this week in an article entitled Patient Star Waits for Title available under the HEADLINE links.

February 6, 2007 Loyola visited Calvert Hall on their senior night and came away with a 40-25 victory. The win represented a school record high of 23 dual meet wins vs 8 losses. It also represented some individual Don records as freshman Gus Moreno earned his 20th win of the season. It was another win over a team under honorable consideration by the Baltimore Sun.

The JV team wrestled in their last matches of the year and won 54-21. The JV squad finished the year with a record of 7-4.

February 3, 2007 The match against Oakland Mills and St Mary's was the last home dual meet for a group of wrestlers who have been with the program since coach Truitt started four years ago. In a style the team has become accustomed to they all wrestled tough and finished their home wrestling careers with a win. Every senior won his last dual meet match. Seniors Ben Garbart, Brendan Smith, Owen Duffy, Jesse Perseghin, Bobby Almon and Hugh Shepard led the team to a 41-12 victory over Oakland Mills following an earlier 45-27 win against Baltimore Sun honorable consideration St. Mary's.

January 28, 2007 The weekend of the Arundel Duals saw the Loyola wrestling team reach several individual and team milestones. The team defeated two more Baltimore Sunpapers ranked teams in Chesapeake AA (12th) and Arundel (10th). The Arundel in was the teams 20th dual meet victory of the year. Individually several Loyola wrestlers reached personal milestones. Seniors Jesse Perseghin and Ben Garbart both crossed the thirty win threshold on the year. Perseghin also has a career high 83 varsity wins. Junior Brian Frantz registered his 20th win and sophomore Drew Simmons recorded his 20th as well. Senior Owen Duffy has crossed the 200 team point level for the year and leads the team with 203.

In a season that has been full of injury and adversity it looked as though Loyola would have an uphill battle this weekend when senior captain Bobby Almon came down with the flu and was sidelined. Loyola as a team though came through and dealt with the adversity as we defeated Chesapeake AA in the very first dual of the tournament 44-21. The first day ended with a very late victory over Bethesda Chevy Chase that saw several Don freshman get some varsity matches under their belts.

Day two started with a tough match against Stephen Decateur. The match was nip and tuck till the end when Kevin Frantz suffered an injury and could not continue in the 103 lb match. Trailing 23-20 and feeling the absence of Almon the Dons bowed out with a 20-41 loss to the tough squad from the eastern shore.

The Dons did however advance to the championship bracket where they faced the winner of pool A the Arundel Wildcats. The match was tight throughout and with two matches to go Loyola trailed 25-31. Gus Moreno wrestling at 130lbs decisioned B Reece and made the score 28-31. In the last match of the dual Brian Frantz majored A Palmer 16-2 to win the dual meet. 32-31. It is the highest ranked team Loyola has beaten in the last years.

Over the two days of wrestling senior Ben Garbart went 8-0, scored 45 team points and recorded three pins.

There will be no practice on Monday. Rest up and be ready to go on Tuesday.

January 24, 2007 Loyola 42 Boys Latin 19. Loyola wins it's second A conference match and improves it's overall record to 15-6. This weekend we will be at the Arundel duals where we will face several highly rated teams including 15th ranked Chesapeake AA, 11th ranked Arundel, 4th ranked Dematha. Loyola has already wrestled 6 ranked teams in the state including the number 1, 2, 3 teams.

On another note senior Owen Duffy won his 30th match of the season last night.

January 21, 2007 Friday night Loyola traveled down to Anne Arundel County to take on the Bruins of Broadneck. It had been a long two weeks over exam week and having wrestled the top three teams in the state (and our conference) and the Dons looked forward to wrestling a Baltimore Sun honorable mention team in the metro area. Loyola quickly got back on the winning track as the Dons ran off 22 straight points from 125-152 to take the lead. Notable wins were Danny Smith's 2-0 defeat of Ward after bumping up to 171 and Ben Garbart's victory sealing major decision at 189.

Although we took no pictures of the match Broadneck High School has a terrific service where they take pictures of the match and post them online. The mat side photographer took over 250 pictures of the varsity and jv match and has posted them at the site. The pictures are available here.

Saturday morning Loyola faced a tougher test as we traveled to Carroll County to take on the 10th ranked Winters Mill Falcons for a tri- meet with them and Liberty High School. Once again the middle weights ran off a series of wins to swing the momentum the Dons way. Starting with Colin Schuster who defeated will Sharkey 4-0 and avenged his season ending defeat to him last year, Loyola got three pins in succession from Brian Frantz, Cameron Miller, and Hugh Shepard and turned a4-14 deficit into a 25-14 lead that would never be relinquished. The match also featured Owen Duffy taking on another of the states top ranked heavyweights in Liberty's Eddie Digman. Owen kept the match close but fell 3-6.

Notable individual accomplishments over the weekend were the 20 wins of the season for Danny Smith and Cameron Miller, and the 30th win of the year for Colin Schuster.

January 17, 2007 It was a match in which everything had to go right for Loyola to win and as luck would have it everything went wrong. Beginning with two unfortunate injuries at practice the previous day to a lost coin toss that we were counting on, to some tough calls on the mat, the visiting Gaels defeated the Dons 57-9. Although the score seems lopsided we took many chances juggling the lineup and each chance backfired. Onward to some of the top ranked public schools Broadneck and Winters' Mill this weekend.

January 13, 2007 The weekend will most likely be remembered more for the Baltimore Ravens losing their playoff game with the Colts, however the Loyola Wrestling team was competing in the 17th annual Edgewood Tournament at the same time, and while the results were not the team win that we expected Loyola's wrestlers did do a remarkable job to finish in 3rd place (165pts) 4 points behind the tournament champion. Battling a case of the flu that affected several members of the team and kept us without one of our most talented wresters Loyola finished with 8th placers and only one finalist. Tony Alongi-Huslig was Loyola's sole finalist and although he lost 7-12 in the finals he led a group that included Jesse Perseghin 4th, Bobby Almon 5th, Gus Moreno 5th, Hugh Sheppard 5th, Danny Smith 4th, Ben Garbart 4th, Drew Simmons 4th, and Owen Duffy 4th.

Tuesday night sees the team back in dual meet action against MIAA A conference rival Mt. St. Joe.

A little research work done in the school archives has uncovered more wrestling lore from Loyola's wrestling past. The information has been added to the yearly results page and while the information is spotty it certainly shows how far the program has come since introduced to Loyola as a varsity sport in 1960. Any additional information would be welcomed and can be submitted though the coaches page on this web site.

January 9, 2007 The great Roman writer Seneca said, "It is the rough road that leads to the heights of greatness". Certainly Loyola is well down that road as we just competed unsuccessfully against the number one and number three teams in Maryland surrounding a weekend trip to Pennsylvania to compete there in the tough Avon Grove dual meet tournament. Looking ahead and further down the road to the MIAA, MIS and National Prep tournaments there will be even more tough matches against 5 more of the top 15 teams in the state. It is these rough spots on the road that will determine how the journey will end, this weekends Edgewood Tournament is an excellent place to get back on track.

January 3, 2007 The year 2006 ended with the Arundel Holiday tournament at Arundel High School. Again Loyola trailed two state private school power houses, Curley and Dematha high school, and finished 5th with 118.5pts. Loyola was led again by it's seniors as Owen Duffy lost an overtime finals match at 285, Bobby Almon (125), Jesse Perseghin (119) finished third while Ben Garbart placed fourth at 189. Also placing were Juniors Brian Frantz and Danny Smith who both placed 5th. Sophomore Colin Schuster (3rd) suffered his first loss on the year as he dropped a close 4-2 semi finals match to public school state champion Colin Ledbetter of Northern. This is the second of the top ten tournaments that we have wrestled in this year. The Arundel tournament is ranked as the 9th most difficult tournament in the state while the BIG 20 tournament is ranked 7th.

Recent articles about Loyola wrestling have been added to the Headlines section to the left. One story on the Arundel tournament has a nice photo of Owen Duffy's finals match.

Important note: Due to a scheduling conflict the Friday, January 5 match against McDonogh is now an away match. It has been picked as the match of the week by today's Baltimore Examiner .

December 20th, 2006 In an afternoon dual meet with Good Council Loyola won both the JV match and the varsity match. In the varsity match up the Dons rolled to a 54-16 victory. The match of the day was Colin Schuster's 2-0 victory over Dan Hawvermale the third place finisher at last year's state championship.

Remember to look on the forum for the holiday practice schedule. Pictures are available now for the Parkville Tournament.

December 18th, 2006 At the Big 20 Tournament at Perry Hall High school over the weekend sophomore Colin Schuster won his second Big 20 championship by pinning his Wall Township opponent in the finals. The Dons as a whole finished in 5th place with 139 points. Placing for Loyola were Owen Duffy 3rd, Ben Garbart 4th, Jesse Perseghin, Bobby Almon and Kevin Frantz 5th. Danny Smith finished in 6th place. Loyola looks forward to their dual meet against Good Council on Wednesday. This is different than the original schedule that indicated that the opponent would be Bishop McNamara.

December 11 2006 Loyola defended it's title as Parkville Invitational champion with a total of 252 points to second place Owings Mills' 215 points. With a very young team the Dons placed 12 of 14 wrestlers. The team was led by it's senior captains as all four won their weight classes Jesse Perseghin at 119, Bobby Almon at 125, Ben Garbart at 189 and Owen Duffy at 275. While those four champions were impressive so was Colin Schuster defending his championship from last year. Other Dons who placed were freshman Matt Hnatiuk and junior Danny Smith who both lost in the finals and picked up second place awards. Freshman Kevin Frantz (3rd), Gus Moreno (4th), Sophomores Tony Huslig (5th), Drew Simmons (6th) and Cameron Miller (6th) rounded out the scoring for Loyola.

December 4, 2006 Loyola improved it's record to 6-0 with a team victory in the inaugural Catholic Invitational Duals at Georgetown Prep on Saturday. In addition to the team wins several Dons placed. Placing first were two freshman 103 Kevin Frantz, 112 John Cole, Jessie Perseghin 119, Bobby Almon 125, Colin Schuster 135, Brian Frantz 140, and Owen Duffy 285. Also placing for Loyola were Drew Simmons 3rd at 215, Ben Garbart 3rd at 189, Joe Dinatale 3rd at 160, and freshman Matt Hnatiuk 2nd at 130.

In a change to the schedule the JV team will be at the Atholton JV tournament December 9th, rather than the previously scheduled Milford Mill. The schedule has been changed on the web site as well. Please update your own schedules.

November 25, 2006 Good kickoff to the season with a hard fought win over John Carroll 33-28. Because of the recent JV dual with John Carroll and a drop out of Mondays scheduled Monday Night Duals the Monday night duals for the November 27th has been cancelled.

November 24, 2006 Remember to be at Loyola at 10:15 tomorrow morning for the first match of the year. Special thanks to Loyola Alums who came back to pay the room a visit. Miguel Bengson, James Davies, Rob Mister, Alex Tiernan, Dan Rodbell all were home from college over Thanksgiving and were a welcome sight.

November 9, 2006 The Loyola Wrestling program is proud to be the host school for the North Baltimore Wrestling Club advanced travel team. The team practices at Loyola on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30-8:15. Information about the team and the novice and elementary and middle school North Baltimore teams can be found at the North Baltimore Wrestling link to the left. There is as well a new link for wrestlers to follow to sign up for their USA Wrestling cards.

October 19, 2006 The Loyola High Wrestling forum is now up and working. You can use it to keep up with current and former teammates, and get announcements from coaches. The forum is located here.

October 13, 2006 The 2007 wrestling schedule is complete and can be viewed, downloaded and memorized at 2007 Schedule or on the links bar. Midnight Madness begins on October 29th, the night of the Loyola open house.

September 25, 2006 Olympian Ken Chertow will conduct a clinic for Loyola Wrestlers this coming Saturday from 9:00 to 12:30. For Loyola wresters the cost will be paid for by Loyola Wrestling so get there on time and take advantage of this outstanding opportunity. Follow this link and bring info with you. Ken Chertow

September 13, 2006 Coach Truitt's practices will be right after school on Tuesday and Thursday. Coach Wineberg's Mean Machine will continue as scheduled.

September 7, 2006 There will be no Mean Machine practice this evening. Beginning next week there will be a practice for Loyola students after school led by Coach Truitt on Monday and Wednesday. Regular practices will continue with Coach Wineberg at 6:00 on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Stay tuned in the next few days for an announcement about a special training session with a nationally known coach at the end of September.

August 14, 2006 There will be no Mean Machine Practice this evening. Regular practices will resume on Wednesday the 16th.

July 23, 2006. In the first few days of the Junior Nationals in Fargo Owen Duffy has gone 1-3 in his pool of wrestlers. He pinned Trent Smith of California.

July 17, 2006 Coach Wineberg, coach of the Maryland Mean Machine took a group of campers to Clarion College this week for an intensive camp. Because of this there will be no Mean Machine practices this week. Practices will start up again on the 25th of July.

Congratulations go out as well to Coach Truitt and his wife Annie who are the new proud parents of a baby boy Tyler.

July 4, 2006 Congratulations to Owen Duffy on representing Maryland and Loyola on Team Maryland at the National championships in Fargo.

Loyola High School Wresling, Home of the Dons