By Sean Williams
Sports Editor
Hofstra graduate student Joe Booth has been to the NCAA tournament, but never as conference champion — until last week, when the 165-pound Long Island native captured an EIWA conference title, going 32-7 this year.
The wrestling team participated in its first EIWA conference tournament last weekend, sending four wrestlers, including Booth, to the NCAA tournament and placing fourth in a field of eighteen, behind only Cornell, Lehigh and Rutgers.
The match was close the entire time, but Booth sealed it with a final takedown to make the final score 6-4 in his favor.
Seniors Jamie Franco and Luke Vaith qualified for the NCAAs, with Franco finishing fifth and Vaith taking second.
Junior Cody Ruggirello also qualified for the tournament.
“I think they did a nice job all weekend, especially today, wrestling hard and Cody and Jamie and Joe and Luke are headed to the national tournament. … That was our goal,” head coach Rob Anspach said.
The four qualifiers were all good bets to make the NCAAs — all but Ruggirello had been there before. One surprise showing was redshirt freshman Frank Affronti, who won a shocking 10-0 major decision over Columbia’s Shane Hughes in the consolation bracket before losing 2-1 to Elliot Riddick, the top-seeded grappler from Lehigh.
The big story for the Pride was obviously the performance of Booth, who was a star at Drexel as an undergraduate before coming closer to home for graduate school.
“It’s just great coming to a big tournament like this and hearing people screaming for you when you get a takedown,” Booth said.
He entered the EIWA tournament as the no. 2 seed behind Cornell’s Dylan Palacio, a wrestler whom Booth has seen several times this year. The rivalry heightened when the two wrestlers, one in blue and one in red, met on the mat.
Luke Vaith, another one of the Pride’s most decorated wrestlers at 141 pounds, lost an achingly close defeat in the finals to Todd Preston of Harvard, a match that ended 8-6 in a second sudden death period.
“[Vaith] wrestles so hard, does the right things all the time …. It’s hard to be mad at a guy that’s trying to extend his lead,” Anspach said. “He’s very capable of being on that podium.”
Franco, the 125-pound senior for the Pride, entered what was probably the deepest pool of talent in terms of weight class.
“Another outstanding job by Jamie, coming in here, scoring a lot of points for the team and really helping us take fourth,” Anspach said.
Ruggirello emerged as one of the Pride’s most consistent wrestlers this year, and he follows in his older brother’s footsteps as another Hofstra wrestler to make the NCAAs.
“Every time [Cody] goes out there he gets a little more confident, a little bit better,” Anspach said.
For every other Pride wrestler the season is over, but these four will travel to Oklahoma City for the biggest event in collegiate wrestling and compete on March 20.
