Pendolino Wrestling Club
Home of the BullFrogs
Through out the years, the Meadville Jr. Wrestling Club continued to seek out competitive tournaments through out Pennsylvania, and surrounding states, as well as bringing in top talent and clinicians to their program with the likes of Bruce Baumgartner, 4X Olympic Gold Medalist. By the time the first Kids in the Program entered into High School, the Meadville High School Wrestling program entered into the best Decade of the wrestling program to date.
The Pendolino Brothers began their wrestling careers in 1975. In their elementary years they developed a solid understanding, work ethic, discipline and love for the sport of wrestling. In the early years, they both had great success reaching high levels of competition and State Championships in Folk Style, Free Style and Greco Roman.
Tony Pendolino began his high school career in 1982 - 1985 and Nick Pendolino began his high school career in 1986-1989. In their 8 year stretch, which included the bulk of kids who were all part of the 1st Meadville Jr. Wrestling Club, the high school team dual meet record was an impressive 128-9-0. Of those 8 years, 5 of the seasons were undefeated. From 1982 – 1985, the team dual meet record was 72 -4-0, with 2 undefeated seasons. From 1986 – 1989 the team dual meet record was 56 – 5 -0, with 3 undefeated seasons. During these years, Meadville sought out competition outside of their district and state, wrestling some of best schools in the country.
In the 8 year time frame of 1982 – 1989, the team won 6 Section Championships,5 District Championships, 4 Regional Championships, and a 2nd, 5th 8th place finishes in the Pennsylvania State Championship in Hershey. In 1982 Meadville crowned it’s first individual State Champion, Jack Uppling, only to follow with 3 more in that time frame, Doug Stanford, Sean O’day and Mike McHenry for a total of 4 individual State Championships.
A number of wrestlers from the first Meadville Bulldogs Jr. Wrestling Club, not only had great high school wrestling careers, but went onto wrestle in college. This program produced several NCAA All-Americans as well as, a NCAA Division I National Champion, Sean O’Day – (3X All-American).
In addition to the great stats in folk style wrestling, this same group of wrestlers continued on to have the same level of success in Free Style and Greco Roman. Having one of the top Freestyle and Greco Roman clubs in Pennsylvania, the program produced a number of State and National Champions in Cadet’s and Junior’s, as well as All-State and All-Americans. The Freestyle Club & Greco Roman club traveled all over the country to compete in tournaments and qualifiers such as, the USA Open, Goodwill Games, the Pan American Games and Keystone State Games.