D’Arcy does it! Holy Spirit senior caps amazing wrestling career by winning state championship

By DAVE O’SULLIVAN Publisher ATLANTIC CITY — About 20 minutes after Holy Spirit’s Pat D’Arcy beat Hanover Park’s Anthony Cefolo 4-1 in double overtime to win the 126-pound state championship at Boardwalk Hall, the smile was still plastered on D’Arcy’s face. Kind of ironic, considering D’Arcy rarely — if ever — breaks into a smile when he is wearing a wrestling singlet. He’s all business. That mentality helped D’Arcy wrestle perhaps the best match of his high school career, on the sport’s biggest stage. Spartans coach Ralph Paolone methodically coaxed D’Arcy, a senior, to follow the game plan against nationally ranked Cefolo, and D’Arcy — who plans to attend Princeton University this fall — was smart enough to know that if he followed the plan he would win his first state championship. “He has some of the best composure of a young man that I’ve ever seen. That’s really from wrestling when he was a junior wrestler on team New Jersey, going to the Mason Dixon duals where every weekend he’s wrestling another junior state champion,” Paolone said. “He has wrestled more overtime bouts and ultimate rideouts than anybody I’ve ever known. He’s very composed, always in good position. It’s just fantastic. I couldn’t be happier for this kid.” Holy Spirit senior Pat D’Arcy leaps into the arms of head coach Ralph Paolone after winning the 126-pound state championship on Sunday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. (Glory Days Magazine photos/Dave O’Sullivan) “This is what it’s all about. To be able to end your season on top of the podium, it’s something special.” D’Arcy said. “It’s what I’ve been striving for, and it finally came true. I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time, every night. Worrying to myself, you know, I’ve been working so hard, what if I come up short again? For it to finally come to fruition, for it to finally happen, it’s special.” D’Arcy lost in the state final at 113 pounds a year ago to Bergen Catholic phenom Nick Suriano, who improved to 121-0 in his career by winning his third straight state championship on Sunday at Boardwalk Hall. The junior, who won this year’s 120-pound title, said he was impressed with D’Arcy’s double-overtime victory over Cefolo. “Everyone was overlooking him and I said, watch, Pat D’Arcy is the real deal, he’s a tough opponent. I wrestled him two or three times last year. He’s just a kid who never stops. It’s awesome. I called it, I knew he was going to win it, and he did,” Suriano said. “Winning that first state title is awesome, I remember that. I got it my freshman year. But whether it is senior year or freshman year, it’s awesome. Congrats to him, he’s a tough guy, a tough opponent, a great kid. My hat’s off to him.” Cefolo, the top overall seed at 126 pounds, went up 1-0 with an escape in the second period after a scoreless first period. D’Arcy returned the favor in the third period, escaping to tie the bout at 1-1. D’Arcy then nearly gave up a takedown at the buzzer, but Cefolo didn’t have enough control to score, sending the bout into overtime. After a scoreless first overtime, D’Arcy caught Cefolo in a roll and was able to score two back points to take a 3-1 lead in the first of two 30-second time allotments in double overtime. In the second portion of double overtime, D’Arcy was able to escape for a 4-1 lead, then held off Cefolo for the final few seconds. “It’s a lot of emotion. Pat is a great kid. He’s always had it in him and it’s great to see him go out there and put it all together, trust himself and go,” said Mtume Goodrum, Holy Spirit’s assistant coach and himself a 3-time state finalist during his days at Absegami. “He’s a very intelligent kid. He gets his game plan, he gets his focus, and each match is individual. Each match is six minutes at a time, from the first match at districts until the end. He just stuck to the plan. D’Arcy tries to break free from the grip of Hanover Park’s Anthony Cefolo. D’Arcy scored a 4-1, double-overtime victory to win his first state championship. “I’m a 3-time finalist, never won it. I actually lost to the coach we wrestled against (tonight). I know that for me, I’ll never forget those losses. My last match in high school was 15 years ago, but I never forget those losses. They stick with you. So a moment like this, you’ll never forget because so much of his life is focused on training and preparing. The first 18 years of his life have been built for this moment. So it’s a beautiful thing to see it come to a positive culmination.” Paolone said what makes D’Arcy’s title so impressive is who he had to beat to win it. North Hunterdon’s Ryan Pomrinca, who D’Arcy beat 2-1 in the semifinals, came into states with a 40-1 record and a national ranking. Cefolo also is nationally ranked and came into the tournament sporting a 37-2 record. He’s also a former state champion. D’Arcy handed those two wrestlers two of their combined five losses this season. “When Pat has motion going, in-and-out, side-to-side, up-and-down, people aren’t going to take him down. He’s controlling the action and the pace, and that’s what he did. We knew Cefolo, he’s nationally ranked, he’s a two-time New Jersey state champion, he’s an All-American. We knew he had an underhook and worked off that. We wanted to wrestle our way, and (Pat) did. It was a great match. Two guys knowing they are going to win, that’s the best kind of match you can have,” Paolone said. “The 126 weight class was unbelievably tough. Suriano is a great wrestler and certainly already one of the best New Jersey has ever had. But when you hit the quarterfinals at 126 in this tournament, every single person was a state placewinner. Pat beat two nationally ranked kids to get this state title. Ryan Pomrinca is nationally ranked, and so is Cefolo, so believe me, we knew this was a tough task going in. “We never looked ahead, just stayed focused one at a time.” D’Arcy said he didn’t care who he had to beat, or what the final score was. He just wanted that state title, badly. “That’s what you expect. You know it’s going to be a grind going in. You just have to stay calm, keep your composure, push through it and find a way to win,” D’Arcy said. “I don’t care how it happened, I won a state title.” Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays  [adsense]