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A Man for All Seasons, Zack Esposito

Whether it was Senior Nationals, Dapper Dan, the Dream Team, or Junior Nationals, Zack Esposito was always there, and always won.

Zack’s full resume for 2002 reads 55 wins, no losses. But what makes that record so very impressive is that he ran the gauntlet. He was the only wrestler in America to win both the folkstyle Senior Nationals and Freestyle Junior Nationals, the two most prestigious and rigorous high school tournaments in the country. On top of that, he won FILA Junior (20 & under) National Championships against a field of college wrestlers, and was so impressive he was named Outstanding Wrestler.

Between Senior Nationals and Junior Nationals, Zack had just four bouts go the distance. Among the 11 tech falls or pins Zack had in these two national tournaments, 4 of his tech falls and one of his pins were over eventual placewinners. What’s more, in Junior Nationals only one opponent scored a point on Espo — he shut out all the rest, including 4 placewinners.

The high school wrestlers Espo defeated over the course of the 2002 season are themselves a virtually complete set of All-Americans. To illustrate, here are some of their names and final AWN rankings: Nate Galloway, twice (AWN #1 and OW at Senior Nationals), Jake Schlottke (AWN #2), Andrew Donofrio, twice (AWN #3), Marc Harwood (AWN #5), Vinny DiGiovanni (AWN #7) and Travis Paulsen (AWN #8).

The college wrestlers Zack defeated at FILA Juniors, which is traditionally the qualifier for the U.S. Junior World Team, included undefeated Junior College National Champ Israel Martinez and two Amateur Wrestling News NCAA Rookies of the Year, David Bolyard of Central Michigan and James Woodall of Penn State, a defending FILA champion, by technical fall. Zack Esposito gave the Blair wrestling fans four great years. He will be missed, but we can take comfort in the certainty that he’s going to have a terrific career at Oklahoma State and in the discovery that there are of a number of “pocket Espo’s” in the Blair room. (The inside trip lives!)

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Robbie Preston’s Junior Nationals Title at 119 – A Story for the Ages

When a wrestler arrives in Fargo unranked nationally by every known national wrestling publication, it is a noteworthy if he goes on to place in the highly competitive Freestyle Junior Nationals, and it is particularly noteworthy if he places high.

That being the case, how does one adequately comment on the feat pulled off by Blair’s Robbie Preston this past July?

Not only did Robbie win every match he wrestled in Fargo to finish first at 119, the deepest weight class out there, but he beat four Asics All-Americans, to whit, first-team AA Mack Reiter of Iowa (8-4), third-team AA Nathan Morgan of California (7-5), third-team AA Sam Hazewinkel of Florida (11-4), and honorable mention AA Eric Stevenson of Oregon (8-4).

To more fully appreciate Robbie Preston’s competition in Fargo, bear in mind that Morgan, whom Robbie beat in a great finals match, is regarded by some wrestling folks on the West Coast as likely to become the best lightweight to come out of California since Steve Abas; that Stevenson scored a tech fall over Derrick Fleenor of Oklahoma for 3rd at 119; that Reiter mauled Christian Staylor of Great Bridge before pinning him for 5th; and that Sam Hazewinkel is the same Sam Hazewinkel who was the OW for this year’s USA Dapper Dan Team and the same Sam Hazewinkel who narrowly lost to Mark Moos at the buzzer (13-12) in last year’s Fargo final.

The 119 lb. weight class was so deep at Fargo that nationally-ranked Luke Smith of Wisconsin, 2nd at Senior Nationals, and Jermaine Jones of Pennsylvania, a multi-year state champ, did not even place.

As if the data in the paragraphs above weren’t enough to get the attention of most every red-blooded wrestling fan, consider that in the storied history of Blair Academy, prior to Robbie Preston, only two wrestlers had ever won Junior Nationals as underclassmen, Scott Schluchter (for Oklahoma) in 1990 and the immortal Steven Mocco in 2000.

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Fargo 2002 - Quite a Performance

This summer in the Junior and Cadet National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota, Blair Academy achieved the single greatest national tournament showing in the school’s storied wrestling history, and possibly the greatest performance in a bona fide national tournament by any high school program ever.

Blair’s 9 All-Americans this year are nearly twice the number it had in any past Junior & Cadet Nationals, and were achieved by a grand total of 13 wrestlers. That’s right, 69% of all Blair wrestlers entered in Fargo 2002 placed.

Moreover, the particularly exceptional results realized by Blair’s Juniors in the freestyle competition are absolutely without precedent. It is almost incomprehensible that 70% of Blair Juniors placed in the top 4 of their respective weight classes.

All told, Blair had two Junior Freestyle Champions, Rob Preston at 119 and Zack Esposito at 152; one second, Mark Perry at 160; three thirds, Max Meltzer at 135, Ryan Davis at 145, and Kurt Backes at 189; and one fourth, Matt Maciag, also at 189.

In Cadets, where only three Blair wrestlers were entered (in part because of injuries), Blair had a 3rd place finish by Hudson Taylor at 160 and a 7th place finish by Alex Maciag at 171.

The accolades about this year’s achievements take nothing away from Blair’s exceptional past performances at National Preps, Senior Nationals and past Junior & Cadet Nationals. But simply put, there were more than 2,000 wrestlers taking part in the Junior & Cadet Freestyle National championship this year, and they wrestled more than 4,000 matches. For one program to have 70% of its Junior wrestlers finish in the top 4 and 67% of its Cadets place is almost surrealistic.

Accomplishments at Fargo 2002

Before reviewing the highlights of each individual Blair wrestler’s performance, let’s take a closer look at the overall accomplishments in Fargo this year by Blair’s Junior Freestyle contingent.

To begin, Blair won its first 23 Junior Freestyle bouts in a row — that’s right, at one point Blair was an amazing 23 & 0 against wrestlers from around the country, all of whom had had to qualify to wrestle in Fargo. Moreover, Blair did not lose a single Junior Freestyle wrestler until the fourth round and had 5 wrestlers (Preston, Davis, Espo, Perry and Backes) still undefeated deep into the competition, when many — if not most — good wrestling states were happy to have a few wrestlers still alive in the competition.

As reflected by the data in the Fargo 2002 Box Score toward the end of this newsletter, Blair Junior freestylers won 85% of their bouts this year, and 68% of their wins were by pin or tech fall. (Last year’s Junior results were quite good; but even with the great Steven Mocco’s dominant statistics, they were still well short of this year’s accomplishment. For example, as can be calculated from data in the notes following the Box Score, this year’s Junior freestylers won 34 more matches than last year’s crew and their won-loss record was 11 percentage pts higher than 2001’s.)