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Queens wrestlers hit the mat in the Bronx
Borough’s boys and girls give strong performance in Jay Alvarez Memorial Tournament
BY ROBERT COLE
Young wrestlers throughout
Queens traveled to Harry
S. Truman High School in the
Bronx to compete with some of
the top athletes in the city and
state at the 2018 Jay Alvarez
Memorial Tournament.
The tournament — now in
its sixth year — is named after
Jay Alvarez, an aspiring wrestler
from the Bronx who was
killed during his freshman
year at Nassau Community
College in Long Island when
he was hit by a drunk driver.
Alvarez was a former
city-champion wrestler, who
represented his high school
— Hostos High School — and
was also an original member
of Beat the Streets, a wrestling
program that works with inner
city wrestlers throughout
the country.
Teams from four Queens
high schools — Thomas Edison,
Townsend Harris, Grover
Cleveland, and Long Island
City — brought their primary
squads to the Bronx to develop
their skills, while obtaining
much needed experience in
the sport.
Although many of the wrestlers
from Queens were relatively
new to wrestling, they
competed well and followed
instructions from their coaches,
who work hard to not only
teach wrestling techniques to
their athletes, but to also teach
life-lessons designed to carry
the wrestlers from beyond their
days of competing on the mat.
Thomas Edison’s first-year
coach Luis Castillo talked
about the importance of taking
part in these weekend
tournaments.
“Wrestlers learn a lot more
in a tournament then they do
in practice, you learn what not
to do and what to do because
they are visually watching so
many matches,” he said.
Doug Rich, a co-coach at
Long Island City who works
with a team that is starting
just its second season, believes
that “wrestling is a special
sport because you have to
have resiliency.”
“Although you are going to
go through your peaks and valleys,
you learn to move forward
so 20 years from now, no one
can take away your wins and
accomplishments,” he added.
A tournament like this allowed
for a wrestler, if he or
she survived to the end of the
round, to receive the right instructions
from his coach that
could help him turn the match
around. Such was the case in
the boys 285-pound match between
Angel Garcia of Grover
Cleveland and Sam Azadi of
Taft. Garcia was outwrestled
by Azadi throughout much
of the first period. His coach,
Hany Morsi continued to call
out instruction throughout the
period, but Garcia could not
immediately implement the
strategy. But a break in the action
allowed Garcia to focus on
his coach’s instruction, which
Thomas Edison’s Ulaan Hyder (top) attempts to pin his opponent, Sajedul Hossain of Bronx Science (bottom)
during the Jay Alvarez Memorial Wrestling Tournament. See photos on Page 49. Photo by Robert Cole
resulted in a pin by Garcia for
the victory.
Morsi, who has coached for
10 years, was thrilled to see
Garcia earn the victory
“New wrestlers are the best.
Their first wins are the most
impressive. It makes me feel
happy for them,” he said. “To
see a student who is very down
on themselves turn things
around makes me feel proud.”
The tournament moving
to a larger facility allowed for
a larger number of wrestlers,
making room for girls to be invited
to compete in the tournament
for the first time.
Queens had three female
wrestlers place in the top three
in their division. Grover Cleveland’s
Johana Apupalo earned
a second place finish in her
weight class, while Long Island
City’s Brittant Reyes and
Grover Cleveland’s Paige Blas
each finished third in their respective
weight classes.
As for the boys, Queens
had a first-place winner in the
Boys 160-pound class in George
Tavares (Townsend Harris),
who defeated another Queens
wrestler, second-place finisher
Kevin Hernandez (Thomas
Edison). Six other Queens boys
schools finished in the either
fifth or sixth in their respective
weight classes.
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