JAG Physical Therapy Youth Championships Recap

Saturday September 19th marked a big day in Staten Island Wrestling. Although local, the event drew a community to come together and put on an outstanding local wrestling event that even saw teams as far as Jersey and Pennsylvania attending. With 140 wrestlers the tournament even served as a very early precursor to the Donald Douglas Memorial Championships which is big in NYC Wrestling. In this article we are going to recap the short but sweet event that was the JAG Physical Therapy Youth Championships. 

Although called the Youth tournament saw K-12 Wrestlers competing. And like the namesake was sponsored by JAG Physical Therapy. CEO of JAG Physical Therapy Mr. John Galluci was a Monsignor Farrell Graduate (Class of 1985) and has since gone on to create one of the leading Physical Therapy Companies in the Nation. We were also very fortunate in helping promote and co-hosting the event. With our friends from SI Advance, Wrestling ReImagined, and Strong Island Productions we were able to promote the event to up to thousands of people in and out of our community. 

The tournament was operating on a new platform this year in a new format that is rapidly growing in the wrestling community. Wrestling Reimagined’s new “War Zone” Format has been growing amongst the wrestling community. This format sees wrestlers being assigned specific weigh in times, time windows to compete in, the choice to wrestle as many matches as they want in said window, and the ability to challenge specific wrestlers. This gives wrestlers more range and freedom in how they choose the wrestle. 

Staten Island really showed out for this event. Like mentioned above the event saw teams and clubs as far as New Jersey and Pennsylvania come to compete. We even saw the newly founded Staten Island Wrestling Club having a big performance on the weekend. But our Red and Black Wrestlers showed out as well! 

Albert Lula of Monsignor Farrell had a great performance. Lula went 3-0 on the weekend dominating his pool. Lula has been a force in the section for quite some time and we can potentially see him announce himself to the State in the post season. Fellow Monsignor Farrell Lion Robert Wieser went 3-1 in competition. Yusef Said of St. Peter’s challenged himself to some good wins this weekend going 2-0 in the event. Fellow St. Peter’s Eagle John Ventre also had a solid weekend of competition going 2-0. 

Some other standout performances included:

Joseph Mascarinas (Monsignor Farrell) 2-2

Daniel Rogan (Monsignor Farrell) 2-0

Thomas Surace (Monsignor Farrell) 2-0

Alan Bityakov (Monsignor Farrell) 2-0 

The Red and Black Squad, although small, had an incredible showing. Many competing will undoubtedly see each other again if not multiple times during this upcoming season. We would like to thank all of the wrestlers, coaches, and families for attending our event. It meant a great deal to us to see everyone who attended come out to compete and support the event. It could not have been done without each and every one of you. It was a fun filled afternoon with some exciting wrestling and we can’t wait to put on more events like this in the future and see this continue to grow.