Thursday, February 6, 2025
Oceanside won’t be taking a conference championship into the most important stretch of the Nassau County wrestling season, but coach Brian Schoenfelder is hoping the Sailors take a few positives away from last Friday’s 37-21 loss to Farmingdale.
“If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best,” Schoenfelder said. “We battled, but we left too many points on the table. Farmingdale is as balanced as any team in the county. Now we have to take a negative and turn it into a positive and finish as strong as we can.”
The Sailors (16-2 in dual meets), who two days earlier crushed Massapequa 46-7 thanks in large part to four pins, lost four of the first five bouts to the Dalers and were unable to dig themselves out of the hole.
“We had a good practice leading up to Farmingdale,” the coach noted. “Maybe we’ll get another shot at them in the playoffs. The county is as wide-open as its been in a long time.”
The top-ranked dual meet teams are Farmingdale, Long Beach, MacArthur and Oceanside, with Calhoun and Freeport not too far behind. Those same teams are likely to contend for the top team score Feb. 15-16 at the county individual championships at Hofstra University.
“We finished eighth in the county last season with 115 points,” Schoenfelder said. “We want to climb that ladder. How high we can get will depend on a lot of things, especially wrestlebacks.”
Oceanside’s wins at Farmingdale came at 145 (Jesse Bittenbender), 190 (Jared Marine), 101 (Luis Estevez), 124 (Jake Strianese) and 131 pounds (Chace Morris.) Strianese, a senior ranked No. 1 in the county, recorded its lone pin.
Those five along with senior Santino Palmisano (170) and sophomore Joshua Moshkovich (285) are at the very least, in Schoenfelder’s opinion, All-County candidates.
“I think we have potential to get five guys to the state tournament,” he said. “The top three in each weight class in Nassau goes. We also have some guys on a mission to get that county title.”
Strianese will be in a loaded 124-pound bracket. He’s a two-time All-County finisher and heads into this week’s dual meet team playoffs with a record of 26-2. “Jake’s work ethic is unmatched,” Schoenfelder said. “He’s a favorite to get upstate and he wants that county title.”
Bittenbender, Morris and Palmisano are tied for the team lead in wins with 28. Marine has 27. Bittenbender and Palmisano are looking for their first All-County campaigns, while Morris, a sophomore, and Marine seek a third as well as going all the way.
Marine placed eighth in the state last winter and reached the 100-win plateau for his high school career earlier this season. Morris is fast approaching that milestone.
Estevez, a freshman, has provided a huge boost to the lineup and has 22 victories.
