Sunday, February 27, 2011

Wrestling pictures



Fischer is second, two others advance

The wrestling season at Columbia High School continues this week as three wrestlers took another step toward a possible state title.
The Tide's Marcus Fischer, Jordon Halter and Derek Zercher all qualified for regionals this weekend at Wilson High School following top five finishes at this weekend's District Three Class AA championships at Hersheypark Arena.
Fischer was second at 285, Halter finished third at 135 and Zercher was a fifth-place finisher at 119.
Fischer, 31-10, advanced easily to the finals at5 285 pounds where he lost to Tylor Unger of Boiling Springs, 6-2. To get to the finals, Fischer, with a first round bye, opened with a 10-1 major decision over Lancaster Catholic's Evan Schnader. Now in the semifinals, Fischer made quick work of Adam Prohaska of Halifax with a pin in 1:28.
Halter, now 35-4, grabbed the bronze medal with a pin of Damon Becker of Bermudan in 2:39.
The Columbia junior opened districts pinning Kyle Dierolf of Oley Valley in 1:34 and followed that with a 10-6 win over Donny Peters of Susquenita. In the semifinals, Halter race into a major obstacle in Peter Renda of Brandywine Heights. Renda scored a 14-4 major decision over Halter.
Needing a win to medal, Halter got it with an 8-7 win over Andrew Mellot of Boiling Springs.
At 119, Zercher settled for fifth place when he scored a 4-2 sudden victory win over Colby Albright of Susquenita.
Zercher won his first won his first bout over Lancaster Catholic's Raul Gonzalez by a 4-3 score. Zercher then went to the consolation round when he lost 15-7 to Bryan Varra of Milton Hershey. He started his comeback toward a medal with a pin in 4:06 of Colby Starner of Bermudian and then beat Zach Huss of Newport, 6-4. That win put him into the medal round where he lost via a tech fall to Trevor Hernandez of Biglerville.
Columbia took seven wrestlers to districts. A fourth grappler, John Markley just missed advancing when he lost at 152 pounds to Bruce Mullen of Newport, 14-8. Had Markley won that bout, he would have advanced as well.
Others competing were Byron Germer, Bryan Flory and Josh Elliot.

Tide's season ends as buzzer-beater falls short

In a game of two different halves, the Columbia boys' basketball team couldn't overcome a bad first half and saw their season end in the quarterfinal round of the District Three Class AA playoffs Saturday afternoon at Hershey High School.


The Crimson Tide (10-13) couldn't overcome a poor shooting first half and lost to Wyomissing,50-49.

In the first half, the Tide, who was playing its first game in 17 days, shot six of 25 from the field and trailed the Spartans 23-16.

In the second half, the shots started to fall, which gave the Tide a chance to win the game at the buzzer. Dominique Johnson's buzzer-beating jumper from the right elbow fell short, ending a frantic second half for the Tide.

As cold as the Tide was in the first half, they connected on their first four shots from the field to open the second half to cut the Spartan lead to one, 27-26 on a jumper from Tre' Simms (18 points). Wyomissing (13-10) went on a four-point run, leading 31-27 on bucket in the paint by Stuart Kase with about two minutes left in the third quarter.

That's when the Tide got hot again. Olajuwon Michael (12 points) and Nick Nobile each scored four points allowing the Tide to take a 35-32 lead after three quarters.

The Tide extended their lead to five points early in the fourth quarter before Wyomissing scored seven of the game's next nine points to tie the game with five minutes left.

The game went back and forth over the next five minutes before the Spartans went up three points on a foul shot by Duval Singleton with 19.4 seconds left. Simms countered the score with two foul shots to pull the Tide within one with 17 seconds left. But Wyomissing thought they had iced the game on a bucket by Joe Cacchione (14 points) with four seconds left.

At that point, Wyomissing led 50-47 but with two seconds left, Simms was intentionally fouled on a three-pointer. With no one at the line, Simms made two of three and the Tide got the ball back. That's when Johnson's game-winning shot fell short.

The first half was not good for the Tide. They fell behind 9-1 in the first half, recovered to pull within 9-6 after eight minutes on a 2-10 shooting quarter. In the second quarter, the shooting was not much better as the Tide was 4-15 from the field, but only trailed in the game by seven at the half.