The End of the Streak in Easton

In sports, we tend to celebrate a lot of milestones that aren't really all that significant. It's a way to keep things interesting for fans. In the grand scheme of things, you could argue that Easton's 68 year streak of having at least one District 11 Champion in wrestling isn't that significant. The district tournament is merely a qualifier to get to the regional tournament to qualify for states. Ultimately, if you have a PIAA Champion or not is what matters. This is a qualifier.

The other side of that is that there is simply nothing like Easton's 68 year run in high school wrestling, and today it is over. The District 11 region of Pennsylvania has long been a hot-bed of wrestling, from Lehigh's college excellence, to Easton and the other great high schools in this region at the Pennsylvania state level. To have one kid be the best in this region every year in the existence of the program is amazing. To make sense of how stupid-good it is, understand that Nazareth, Northampton, Liberty, Parkland, and Bethlehem Catholic have all done many things in their wrestling history, and none of them have a streak that has even begun to challenge Easton's. It's that remarkable.

As I said, yesterday that streak ended, which is truly rather surprising to me. Easton had a pretty good team this season, certainly a top ten in the state team, and had a couple of returning district champions who had a combined record in the neighborhood of 70-1. Even still, when the brackets were out on Friday morning, they had no number one seeds, and you could see how they might come up short. They did, leaving this pretty good squad with the dubious distinction of being the season that the streak died in. Even so, Easton will take eight kids to regionals, a crop most schools would kill for, and a good chunk of those eight will likely move on to the state tournament. While i'm sure some will question if Easton should have dropped down a weight, or wrestled a tougher schedule, or done whatever else, the truth is that sometimes winning just isn't in the stars. Easton had lots of tough kids enter the districts who could have won a title, if they were in the right weight. None of them happened to be in the right weight this year. Ironically, I had heard people all season saying next year this would happen. I guess this saved the re-building squad for 2016-2017 from having to wear this one.

It's sad to see a streak like this end, but such is life. It was an amazing run, one that many times came down to the last one or two kids in finals, and yet always seemed to survive. If Easton is to start off another 68 year run next season, I would be 100 when they get there. In other words, I'll never see anything like "the streak" again.