Season in Review: Fort Lee Wrestling

With all winter sports seasons having concluded, Fort Lee Patch now takes an in-depth look at how each team fared over the past few months.

With the third of five installments, the season in review segment continues with the story of the Bridgemen wrestling team.

From last year to this season, Fort Lee had to endure the loss of 10 graduating seniors. The Bridgemen called it a “rebuilding year,” but head coach Alex Almeyda preached confidence in the 2010-2011 season.  

"My expectations are always high," coach said before the year started. "We did lose a lot but we can hold our own with anybody. It's just a matter of believing."

So with almost a dozen vacancies in the starting lineup, the Bridgemen had more openings for underclassmen to crack the rotation.

Some had never wrestled before, and others only had recreational experience to that point. As coach Almeyda described the situation, he saw “a lot of deer in the headlights,” with the new situations of varsity wrestling.

In the season’s earliest matches, Fort Lee was being outscored by double digits against their opponents, but the Bridgemen rebounded with closer matches in early January. In the span of one week, Fort Lee took Dumont and Westwood to the brink with the deciding final weight classes.

The first contest, a 46-34 loss to their former coach Ken MacIver, was one that meant a lot to all associated with the event.

“I’ll admit it was a bit emotional,” said senior wrestler Anatoliy Alkazov. “I like to think of my opponent as my foe, and that includes the coach. But in this case, I knew the coach so it was tough.”

Then on Friday of that week, the Bridgemen held a late advantage before falling to Westwood in a final match again 38-36.

“They’re coming along,” coach Almeyda said at the time of his young student athletes. “We’re improving every week and that is all you could ask for. If we wrestled [Westwood] four weeks ago, we would have lost by 40. It’s all about getting confidence.”

And the team started to build that confidence before things started to go against Fort Lee. The following week, a few wrestlers missed weight in a 60-24 loss on the road against Northern Valley/Demarest. Then, the weather bludgeoned the Bridgemen with three consecutive weeks of snow-postponed matches. As the team couldn’t even practice on some days due to the weather, the season hit a point unlike any other that coach Almeyda had witnessed in his 20 plus year coaching career.

“The snow has been killing us,” said the bewildered coach. “We’re wrestling the snow that’s for sure!”

“I used to love the snow,” said junior wrestler Demir Radoncic. “But now that it interferes with wrestling, [the snow] is balancing out. There has to be a limit.”

Eventually the record-setting snowfall would subside and the team continued along with the rest of the season as scheduled.

Fort Lee competed in the District 16 tournament in February and saw senior Jose Granados finish in third place for his weight class (119). Juniors Andrew Lee and Demir Radoncic also advanced to the consolation round, where they would both finish in fourth place.

As the Bridgemen finished the year 4-10, coach Almeyda re-examined the entire season over the weekend.

“Having a rebuilding year, we still had a strong schedule and the kids finished off a lot better than the whole [season] started,” he said. “The matches they were getting beat, we were not losing by a lot…with the middle of the season, they started to get the hang of it.”

Demir Radoncic finished as Fort Lee’s top wrestler this year in terms of wins and losses at 18-7, and will be returning next year with what coach Almeyda estimates as 90 percent of the team.