Let's go back to February 1979.
The first thing one will notice is that I selected a loss as my greatest match. How could that be? There have certainly been some dominating performances since those early days.
Let me explain.
Derby High wrestling was still in its infancy since the program only began in 1976. By 1979 we were ready to make our move on the state scene. If you were around in those days, wrestling matches were routinely dueling with basketball for the big crowds.
This was our last match before the Class S tournament and we had rode a wave of great publicity. The Evening Sentinel had dubbed our middleweights through the heavyweights "Death Row" because once we hit the middleweights we rarely lost.
We were so good we would calculate how many pins we needed to win the match. If we forfeited three or four weight classes and were down 18 or 24-0, we never panicked because we knew we would only need to pin the rest of the opposing team to pull out the victory.
You could read the article below, but basically we took it on the chin in the first few matches. Joe Swinski and Dave Stumpo fought valiantly but ended up a little short. Don Frasier (who would end up with a bronze medal in the states) got us on the board. My classmate Scott Snyder (who now resides in California) took care of business and got us back in the match. Craig Margiano (who would be Derby's 1st gold medalist) inched us closer in the team points.
I was next and was able to pin my guy with six-seconds left in the match to put us ahead.Alan Tomasko fell victim to a pin and we were back in the hole.
In one of the biggest surprises of the evening Jim Urbano (who would become Derby's second gold medalist) lost a major decision. This simply didn't happen. Urbano was part of Death Row and for the first time in a long time we wondered if we could make a comeback.
It was at this point in the match that this meet turned into something special. Kerry O'Connell (Red) stepped onto the mat. He was up against an undefeated highly ranked opponent who was expected to give Red a whooping.
Red knew it as did everybody else in the gym that night. There was just one small problem, Red's opponent underestimated him.
His opponent started throwing Red around like a rag doll. Red was trying to wrestle carefully and once or twice he got himself in trouble and was fighting with all his might to stay off his back. As the third period began, Red was behind and it looked like he would suffer a major decision.With less than a minute to go, Red saw an opening and lo and behold his opponent was on his back struggling to keep from being pinned. The crowd was going crazy and yelling for Red as the clock continued to tick...15...14...13...12...11...10. Suddenly the referee slapped the mat. Red won by pin.
As you can imagine, the crowd went wild and Red's dad ran onto the mat and lifted his son in the air as he gave him a big bear hug.
When I think of that moment of father and son, I am reminded of Rudy, Hoosiers and other great sports movies.
Unknown to many people (except coach Matthews who was livid), the referee had walked to the scoring table and penalized our team one point because a spectator (Red's dad) had run onto the mat.
When things had calmed down, Tim Blake lost a tough decision.
This meant our only chance at a team victory was for Ben Blue (our first silver medalist and then one of Derby's greatest wrestlers) to pin his guy.
Ben tried his best and kept trying risky moves to get the pin, but it just wasn't meant to be.
The final score was Holy Cross 24 - Derby 23.
We went on to place second in the Class S tournament the following week.
To this day, I have never met a single person who was in the gym that night who would have traded that one point we were penalized.
