DeMorro Finishes Solid Two-Year Stint with Yellowjackets’ Wrestling
Nick DeMorro recently finished up a successful two-year tenure as a member of the East Haven wrestling squad. Nick had played football since he was in 5th grade, but then suffered a knee injury during his sophomore year at the high school, and decided that he wanted to try a different sport. Some of Nick’s friends on the wrestling team encouraged him to give it a shot, and he liked it so much that he stuck with wrestling through the next two seasons.
“A couple of my friends were doing wrestling for years and told me that I have to try it out,” says Nick. “I did try out and it was really fun.”
Nick started out wrestling in the 126-pound weight class as a junior, and it didn’t take long for him to find his signature move: the body slam. Nick’s first attempt didn’t go so well, but he quickly turned the move into an asset on the mat. Nick wound up slamming his way to solid showings at both the SCC and Class M State championships during his rookie campaign.
“My move is definitely the body slam. Say the person is on the bottom and I’m on top, when I go to stand up, I wrap my hands around their waist, pick them up, and throw them to the ground,” says Nick, now a senior. “My very first match, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I picked the kid up and threw him to the mat. They gave me a warning for it. I didn’t know what it was, so when I did it again, I was disqualified from the match. From then, it stuck with me and I learned how to do it controlled.”
Even though Nick joined the Yellowjackets halfway through his time at the high school, Head Coach Lou Rivellini says that he quickly progressed into a force to be reckoned with at both the conference and state levels. Nick moved up to the 132-pound weight class this year. Unfortunately, he was unable to compete in the postseason due to a shoulder injury.
“Nick won matches in both the SCC Tournament and Class M as he took fifth place last year,” says Rivellini. “Nick has come a long way in the few years he’s been on the team. He had a decent regular season as a junior, finished the season strong, and then continued that success this season, getting us big wins all year. Unfortunately, his season ended early and he was forced to forfeit both of the end-season tournaments, which he could have done very well in had he not been injured.”
Nick had a great run through the Class M State Championship as a junior last winter. Nick vividly remembers the look of amazement on assistant coach Mark Tolla’s face as he kept winning matches. Tolla knew that Nick was putting everything together to make a great debut on the state’s biggest stage.
“It was like a light switch just turned on. That’s what Coach Tolla said as his jaw dropped,” says Nick. “I just kept throwing moves down. If they didn’t work, I’d move onto the next one. They just kept coming out.”