Cinnaminson outbattles Delran as Frey, young wrestlers feature

DELRAN – You can call Eddie Frey young and inexperienced if you want.

The Cinnaminson freshman went into Tuesday night's clash with Delran with just two wins under his belt; one was a fifth-place match at a preseason tournament. The other was a forfeit.

So yes, to young and inexperienced. No, to unproven.

Frey's dominating, 9-2 win over the Bears' Dominik Milam at 157 pounds?

That was proof; an early bout that looked even, but fell to Cinnaminson, and started a trend that boosted the Pirates to a 43-18 win in a Burlington County Scholastic League Patriot Division meet.

“He's one of those guys – we put him out early this season against a really tough opponent (Pitman's Cole McFadden, currently 20-3),” Cinnaminson assistant coach Joe Henshaw said. “And we just needed him not to get pinned one time. And he did it. He fought off his back a number of times and saved us a team point. So he's one heck of a fighter. He works hard, he trains hard and he fights.”

He also accepts that he's going to be thrust into that spot from time to time.

It's OK. Part of the sport.

“I do that all the time,” Frey said. “I don't really mind. I feel like the underdog, going into that situation, and I feel like I help the team out, a lot.”

Tuesday the Pirates needed a different kind of help, and Frey got to go out on the mat and seek some payoff.

Senior Sam Kotch started them off with a pin at 138 pounds, but Drew Roskos countered with a pin for Delran at 144.

The next two bouts looked like toss-ups, but the Pirates took them both, Eoin Toryk hit a hip toss and a headlock in the final minute that earned him a 6-2 win over Delran's Jared Scotton at 150.

Frey came out and scored a takedown to set the next match in motion.

“I was planning on working on the high crotch, but it didn't work out, so I went with a double,” Frey said. “(After that) I feel like I can do it again.”

A second-period reversal doubled Frey's advantage and he got ambitious in the third, when he grabbed three back points with a half-nelson.

Milam got a point back when Frey was hit with a third caution midway through the third period. He opted for a neutral start with 42 seconds left and made a run at a major decision, which would have required two takedowns.

He got one.

But it was still a big win from an all-but-unknown quantity, and it started some dominoes falling. The Pirates won 10 of 14 bouts, and only two of those wins came from seniors. Frey, Thomas Lorimer, who won a 7-2 decision over Justin Scotton at 113 and Dylan Vallone – who took a 10-2 major decision from Paul Pereira at 126 – are all freshmen.

“They all stepped up in the moment,” Henshaw said. “It's definitely a big rivalry. There are little things that we need to work on here and there, but obviously, for a lot of the younger guys, this was the match that they stepped up in. The veterans, the captains, really led the way, and they let these younger guys show what it's all about – driving and working to succeed.”

Coming up

Cinnaminson won for the seventh time in its last 10 meetings with Delran as Kotch (138), Colton Urwiler (190) and Mitchell Dalessio (132) scored pins. The Pirates improved to 9-5 overall and 3-0 in the Patriot Division. Bordentown improved to 2-0 in the Patriot with a 53-27 win over Pemberton, and the Scotties will try to stake their own claim on the title next week, when they host Delran Tuesday and Cinnaminson Wednesday.

The kitchen sink

Delran coach Nathan Marter tried every trick he knew to eke out enough points to win his rivalry match, including borrowing – if that's the right word – 106-pounder Rosemary Palena and 120-pounder Kalli Roskos from the Delran girls' team. Palena got a headlock in on the Pirates' Ethan McCaffrey and brought their bout to an end at 1:12. Roskos scored a last-second escape to force overtime, but ultimately fell to Cinnaminson's Alex Ramos, 8-7, in ultimate tiebreaker.

“I've got about six girls in the room that fight and scrap and battle and show up every day,” Marter said. “Just like my guys do. They do the same practice, with the same toughness, and I'd put 'em up against any boys. Both of them just really give everything they've got.”

Marter didn't feel like there was a lack of effort on anybody's part. It just wasn't the Bears' night.

“We actually only won four bouts,” he said. “I went through it, and I looked, and there were about seven or eight toss-up bouts. We lost all of them. That's where it turned for us. Everything I wanted them to do, they did. Everything I wanted to do, I was able to do. We just were on the wrong end of all seven or eight of those toss-up bouts. I don't know what it was. It could have been bad luck, it could have been that they outworked us, but I know we worked hard. I know we gave everything we had.”

John A. Lewis is a sports writer for the Burlington County Times, Courier Post and The Daily Journal. E-mail him at jlewis@thebct.com or follow on Twitter @JohnLewis19. Please consider supporting local journalism with a subscription.

This article originally appeared on Burlington County Times: Freshman Frey gets some payoff as Cinnaminson outbattles Delran