Over the past three years, if a championship has been at stake in WPIAL Class AA wrestling, it’s been Burrell and Shady Side Academy battling for it.

That held true Wednesday night, when host Burrell took down Shady Side Academy, 34-30, for the Section 3-AA team tournament title and likely locked up the top seed for next week’s WPIAL team playoffs.

Yesterday’s meeting was rematch of both last year’s section championship and WPIAL final — both won by Burrell. The Buccaneers also took down the Indians for the 2008 WPIAL team title.

“I wrestled through it in high school,” said first-year Burrell coach and former Bucs standout Ryan Yates. “It doesn’t seem like anything has changed, as far as the intensity of the rivalry between the two teams. Both teams want to be on top, and we worked real hard to get this.”

Despite forfeiting three weight classes (103, 152, 160), Shady Side Academy (13-4) gave Burrell (9-7) a strong match, winning seven of the 11 contested bouts. Indians coach Tim Giel said he expects his team to be at full health and using a full lineup for the WPIAL playoffs — where he hopes to run into Burrell again in the finals. The playoff brackets will be announced today.

“I hope they put us on opposite sides of the brackets,” Giel said. “I don’t think there’s another team that can wrestle with Burrell. There’s some good teams out there, but we’ve got a pretty good rivalry. We’ll see what happens next week.”

Shady Side Academy won the first three bouts of the match, which started at 130 pounds, and jumped out to a 15-0 lead.

Bouncing back quickly, the Bucs got on the scoreboard when 145-pounder Cole Harkins pinned the Indians’ Ryan Oliver at 1:40 of the first period. A pair of Shady Side Academy forfeits followed to put Burrell ahead, 18-15.

After a Matt Cunningham decision at 171 tied the match for the Indians, Burrell grabbed the lead for good when 189-pound freshman Dakota DesLauriers recorded an 11-6 win and 215-pounder Brian Beattie followed that up with a 10-2 major decision.

Shady Side Academy answered when Lower Burrell resident Nick Ciesielski pinned Burrell’s J.T. Naviglia 59 seconds into the first period of the heavyweight bout.

But another Indians forfeit followed at 103, and another Burrell freshman, 112-pounder Carl Samuels, used a 10-7 decision over Nick Dias to put the match out of reach.

“A lot of guys stepped up,” Yates said. “Those young guys, we really needed them, and they came through in the clutch.”

Burrell reached the final after overpowering Kittanning, 50-14, in the opening round, while Shady Side Academy knocked off Highlands, 52-30, at the same time.

In the third-place match, Kittanning (10-5) was able to rebound from its humbling defeat and improve its playoff seeding by cruising past Highlands (13-9), 57-20.

“Our goal coming in was winning at least one of these matches,” Kittanning coach Jeff Putt said. “That should put us as a top four or five seed, as for what we’re looking at next week.”

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