Athletic throwback: 2015 wrestling team wins third straight PSAC crown

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Michael Boylan, Sports editor

This week six years ago, the Mercyhurst men’s wrestling team defeated Pitt-Johnstown to be crowned the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) regular season champions.

It was the third consecutive year the Lakers won the PSAC Division II Regular Season Dual Championship.

Mercyhurst entered the match up ranked fifth while Pitt-John-stown ranked sixteenth. The hard-fought match ended with a 24-15 Laker win. With the victory Mer-cyhurst improved their record to an impressive 18-1.

Redshirt sophomore Willie Bo-hince opened the event at 125 pounds with a 1-0 victory over Evan Link. Following the night, Bohine held a 28-4 record overall while having gone 18-1 in duals.

Next up was redshirt senior Ryan Bohince at 133 pounds. Ryan fell 2-4 to Corey Bush of UPJ. This was followed by red-shirt junior Kody Young who fell to UPJ’s Sam Hanau 7-4 at 141 pounds.

Following this, redshirt junior Jeremy Landowski and redshirt sophomore Francis Mizia both delivered major decision wins for Mercyhurst. At 149 pounds, Landowski won 15-2 against his cousin and UPJ wrestler Cole Landowski. Mizia, competing at 157 pounds, defeated Steve Ed-wards with a score of 12-0.

Nationally-ranked redshirt junior Angelo Bortoluzzi com-peted for Mercyhurst at 165 pounds against UPJ’s own nation-ally-ranked Tyler Reinhart. Bor-toluzzi took a 4-3 lead to start but ended up falling 6-4 after a late takedown by Reinhart.

Next up were three consecutive wins for the Laker wrestlers. These came from redshirt junior August Mizia at 174 pounds, sopho-more Dakota DesLauriers at 184 pounds, and redshirt junior Brian Beattie at 197 pounds. Mizia won by major decision 9-1 over UPJ John Blankenship.

DesLauriers pinned opponent Nick Pasqualle in just 48 seconds in the match following.

For the last match of the day, Beattie took a 4-0 victory over Forrest Tuttle.

Mercyhurst had five wrestlers ranked in the top eight of their weight class on the national level. These included Bohince, Land-owski, Francis Mizia, Bortoluzzi, and August Mizia.