St. Joe’s Wrestling Continues Dominance Of Canisius

In many sports, there’s a hot debate over the better team between St. Joe’s and Canisius, the two biggest rivals in the Monsignor Martin Athletic Association.

Not wrestling. For two decades, the Marauders have had the upper hand and that continued on Tuesday night.

St. Joe’s continued its dominance against Canisius, beating the rival Crusaders for an 11th straight season on Tuesday night by a 42-23 count at Canisius High School.

“That’s 11!” St. Joe’s coach Peter Kennedy said. “Absolutely always nice to beat Canisius. Hopefully this will give us some momentum for the rest of the winter into the spring.”

The Marauders have owned the rivalry in recent years and it continued on Tuesday. Over the last 20 seasons, St. Joe’s is now 17-2-1 against its arch-rival.

The Crusaders came ready to compete on Tuesday and won four straight matches to take an early 19-9 lead. But that’s when the St. Joe’s studs stepped to the mat. From 145 pounds and up, the Marauders have been strong all season and that happened again in the rivalry match. St. Joe’s won seven of the eight highest-weight matches to put things way.

“Again, 45 to 85 put the match away for us,” Kennedy said. “They’ve been doing to for us all year and they did it again tonight.”

Caleb Long (145 pounds) and Ty Slaugenhoupt (152) got things going for the Marauders with hard-fought decisions and then standouts Garrett House (160) and Nick Martone (170) followed with pins. Matthew Werts (182) and Freddie Nixon (195) extebded the run with wins by decuision and then heavyeright Caleb Lesswing sealed teh deal for teh Marauders.

Early on, Cade Carey (113) won by pin for SJCI in what was seen as a toss-up match entering the evening. Samuel Baker (106) opened the meet with a decision victory and Dalas Jackson (99) won by forfeit for the Marauders.

“Always happy with the way we compete,” Kennedy said. “Everybody’s always out here working hard. There are things we need to improve on to widen the gap, but it’s alright so far.”

Canisius got wins from Barry Colby (120), Nick Sillart (126), Matthew Taboni (132), Matt Baldwin (138) and Mason Hoose (220).