Abington Heights junior Mason Whitney captured his third state medal, placing a career-best third in the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Individual Wrestling Championships March 5-7 at the Giant Center in Hershey.
Whitney recovered from a 1-0 loss to Altoona’s Braiden Weaver in the tournament opener to win six straight bouts, including avenging that loss. The third-place finish at 133 improves upon his seventh-place finish as a freshman and eighth-place finish as a sophomore.
The two-time District 2 champion and three-time district finalist finished the season 54-7, pushing his career mark to 137-22.
Whitney began his march toward third place with an 18-2 technical fall over Hempfield’s Brady Deck in 3:59. He followed that up with a 10-0, major decision of Northampton’s Matthew Sommer. Following another major decision, 9-1 over North Penn’s Shane Young, and technical fall, 16-1 in 3:19 over Upper Perkiomen’s Sean Murray, the last two bouts became more challenging. Whitney won the rematch with Weaver 3-2 and defeated Nazareth’s Caleb Kosko 4-3 in the consolation final.
The win over Kosko repeated a victory in the third-place bout at the Northeast Regional in Bethlehem a week earlier.
Whitney finished the season with 24 technical falls, giving him 46 for his career.
Abington Heights teammate Brady Full lost two close decisions and was eliminated.
Full fell to Trinity’s Dominick Canali 4-0 and Altoona’s Dekland Barr 2-1 at 127 pounds.
Abington Heights finished 42nd out of 121 teams with state qualifiers with 19 points.
Nazareth won the team title 84-68 over Notre Dame-Green Pond. The top four teams were all from the Northeast Region.
