Despite injury-stricken lineup, new coach Abe helps North Allegheny find success
When Sanshiro “Sunny” Abe took over as North Allegheny's wrestling coach in April, his wrestlers didn't know Abe personally, but they knew what kind of personality to expect.
“My first, initial reaction, was ‘this guy means business,' ” senior Sean Kalmeyer said. “I knew of him, but I knew he was intense. The guy knows what he's talking about.”
Abe, who was hired after 15-year coach Jamie Kyriazis stepped down in March, has the wrestling resume to back it up. He won three Big Ten championships at Penn State, won an NCAA title at 126 pounds in 1996 and competed for Japan in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
His first season at 10th-ranked North Allegheny comes after seven seasons at Central Catholic, which had gone 33-55 in the four seasons before he arrived and produced 20 state qualifying wrestlers during his tenure.
Abe said the logistics of running his first high school program were more difficult — he had to have a hand in fundraising in addition to coaching — but added it taught him how to be a better coach.
“Because of the nature of the program (at Central Catholic), I had to do a couple different things, not only the coaching aspect,” Abe said. “That helped me know inside-out what a high school program is all about.”
A little more than a month into Abe's first season at North Allegheny, the Tigers are having success, posting a 2-1 start in Class AAA Section 3-A with wins over Butler and Knoch.
In the 34-team King of the Mountain tournament in December, the Tigers took eighth. At the 48-team Powerade tournament last month, three Tigers placed — including a silver medal at 182 pounds for junior Jake Woodley — to push North Allegheny to a 14th-place finish.
Several Tigers wrestlers have gotten off to strong starts this season, including 106-pound sophomore Jacob Downing (10-5), 138-pound junior Jake Hinkson (16-6) and 195-pound sophomore Francis Duggan (18-3), who took third in his weight class at Powerade.
The strong results have come even while the Tigers wait to get back to full strength. Abe said his team is without five or six starters because of injury, including junior Sean Hoover, who won the Eastern Area Invitational at 160 pounds in December before suffering a knee injury in practice, and won't have its full slate of starters until the WPIAL playoffs.
“Once we get a full team, I really think we could make a good run,” said Woodley, who is 20-2 this season. “I think a lot of teams are taking us lightly, but I mean it's unfortunate, we deal with injuries a lot. But both (of the last two) years we came back and made a good run in the playoffs, so hopefully this year we do the same.”
Abe shares that hope and said he has been preaching to his team about training hard and focusing on peaking at the right time. So far, his wrestlers are buying in.
“They give us 100 percent every practice, and they've been working really, really hard,” Abe said. “Chemistry-wise, I think we're doing something good.”
Andrew Erickson is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aerickson@tribweb.com or via Twitter @AErickson_Trib.
