Wrestling: ‘He’s like Pac-Man’ St. Charles East’s AJ Marino served well by aggressive style

AJ Marino’s wrestling style isn’t considered top secret.

“It’s no secret. I’m not giving any intel. He’s highly aggressive,” St. Charles East coach Jason Potter said of Marino, the Saints’ senior 120-pound. “We joke that he’s like Pac-Man. He keeps going forward. He keeps coming at you.”

“We’ve done a lot of work [with him]. A little bit of technical stuff, but he’s bought into our style of coaching and our style of competition,” Potter continued. “I think he’s really just flourished out there. His training partners are the best guys in the country and he’s bought into the system and taken advantage of that. It’s awesome to see the success that he’s having and I think he’s going to have success at this level and the next.”

That aggressive mindset has served Marino to a respectable 25-7 record heading into this weekend’s DuKane Conference meet. Marino has held a number of strong performances including a first place finish at the Illini Classic last Saturday, fourth place at the Cheesehead Invitational and seventh place at Dvorak in December.

“It’s been pretty amazing,” Marino said. “I started off strong with preseason. I took a few little steps back at a tournament...just the extra work I’ve been doing at practice, pushing myself, getting my conditioning up, staying after and doing extra work with coaches, the practice partners I have, everything is pretty insane. It helps me a lot.”

Marino moved from Illinois to the greater Houston area when he was 10 years old. He moved back to St. Charles last year, just in time for his senior year with the Saints.

“That was kind of his natural style. He’s in your face. He’s constantly coming at you,” Potter said. “We just tightened up some of the technique. I think from the combo of some of the wrestling up in Illinois is different than down in Texas. Technique is a little different, scrambling is a little different. He’s been able to stay true to his natural style that he’s grown up with and then, just add some of the stuff he’s been able to pickup from our coaching staff and his teammates.”

Marino earned Most Outstanding Wrestling award on Saturday at the Illini Classic and beat Hersey’s Esteban Delgado in a 7-2 victory. The Saints finished with six first place titles and had 318.5 points for the team championship.

“I think I wrestled really technical. I stayed on my offense the whole time,” Marino said synopsizing the title match. “I pushed the pace at the end of the match. I’m really a sucker for slide-bys but I defended it really well in that match. I ended up scoring off of the slide-by he tried to hit.”

The Saints now turn their attention to the rest of the season. They project to have multiple state qualifiers in Champaign one month from now.

Saturday is the DuKane Conference meet. The Saints’ wrestling room appears ready for the end of the year push.

“We really tried to focus on the end of the year [and] kept that mindset,” Potter said. “We had guys out in the beginning and the whole time, we stayed calm, and we understood that this would be the part of the season where we were peaking. I think the boys are excited. We feel like we’re wrestling really well and I think we’re going to continue to improve here the next couple weeks.”

“I feel like we’ve trained them and timed them right. I’m just really excited to get to the postseason and see what we can do,” Potter continued. “The talent is there. We just have to take care of business.”