Leading off today: Top-seeded Mike Soria beat St. Anthony's Chris Brienza and Max Soria defeated Asher Kramer of Suffern to set up a quarterfinal match yesterday between Kings Park's 96-pound twins at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association wrestling championships in Albany.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the mat: Max defaulted, allowing Mike to walk into the semifinals.
"We don't wrestle each other as a rule," Mike Soria told Newsday. "We work out and compete in practice every day. But we will not wrestle in a match. It would end up in a fight."
"They were supposed to wrestle three times during the season in tournaments, including the League IV tournament, and Mike forfeited to Max," Kings Park coach Jack Magnani said. "It's a family decision to keep things civil."
It was Max's turn this time; there is no provision in the state seeding criteria to move siblings into opposite sides of the bracket and perhaps avert head-to-head meetings before the final.
"They're both excellent wrestlers and very capable of winning the state crown," Magnani said. "We were just disappointed that the state committee couldn't find a way to split them in the 96-pound bracket so they didn't have to wrestle each other unless they met for the title."
It's an intriguing story, and I'm sympathetic to the need for maintaining peace in the family, but wouldn't the better solution have been for one of the twins to move up a weight class at the beginning of the season? After all, we're talking about the state championships rather than some eight-team Christmas tournament sponsored by the chamber of commerce.
When you get to the final weekend of the season, shouldn't the goal to be to compete and to win?
Speaking of not competing: North Babylon senior guard Eugeneia McPherson will not play tonight against Copiague in the Section 11 girls Class AA basketball semifinals for undisclosed reasons, Newsday says.
North Babylon coach Mike Petre confirmed that McPherson will not play. McPherson, a St. John's recruit who is second on the team in scoring and first in rebounding, declined to comment.
Petre said McPherson will play in the championship game next Friday if North Babylon advances.
Cheektowaga pulls upset: Buffalo East, ranked seventh in Class A by the New York State Sportswriters Association, saw its season come to an end with a 50-49 loss to Cheektowaga (9-12) in the Section 6 Class A-2 quarterfinals.
Senior Damond Raineys's jumper with seven seconds to play proved to be the winner moments after Domonique Jackson's layup had put East (18-3) ahead. Rainey finished with 17 points.
