A look at Poly Prep’s performance at the 2019 Prep National Championships!
February 22-23rd 2019 was the 2 day period that hosted the tournament that served as the pinnacle of Private High School Wrestling, the Prep National Championships!
I’m going to highlight 3 Poly Prep wrestlers who stood out during that tournament, Charley Barry, David Berkovich, and Dove Bonjean-Alpart.
Starting with Dove, he started out strong with a pin in 1:15 of the first period, then went on have 5 more tough matches throughout the tournament. Going 4-2 on the day, Dove got rose to the occasion in every match he had. Even in the matches he lost, he made sure to put some points on the board and make those matches go all 3 periods. He ended off the day with a 7-0 decision over Noah Burstein of NMH(Northfield Mt. Hermon), to earn a 7th place finish! Now on to David. Berkovich looked very dominant in his first 3 matches, with 2 tech-falls and a pin in under a minute. He then had a tougher challenge in the finals going against Nick Incontera of Blair Academy. A hard fought battle unfortunately ended up in a 3-1 decision loss for the Blue Devil. But a great performance by both wrestlers nonetheless.
And last, but certainly not least, Charley Barry. Barry wound up going 1-2 on the dat, so he unfortunately wasn’t able to reach the podium, however, Charley did have a good season that year up to that point, and showed that even qualifying for a National Tournament is no small feat. Charley Barry is one of the unsung heroes of NYC wrestling and was the first high level wrestler that took me under his wing for a time, and helped me to get better, when Beat The Streets was using Poly Prep as a Training Center, way back in 2016. I’ll always remember that. His High School career may have not ended how he wanted, but he’s far from done.
Since graduating High School in 2019, both Charley and David decided to continue wrestling in college at the Division 1 level. Charley’s at The University on North Carolina, and David decided to stay local and is attending Columbia University. No NYC wrestler has qualified for the D1 NCAA Championship tournament, let alone reach any spot on the podium. If there’s any NYC wrestlers that could eventually accomplish that, Charley Barry and David Berkovich are on that list.
Written by: Julius Whetstone