Aiello Makes Statement on Big Stage
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By Jeff White
jwhite@virginia.edu
CHARLOTTESVILLE– The 2017-18 season ended on a painful note for University of Virginia wrestler Jay Aiello, who went 0-2 at the ACC championships after suffering a serious shoulder injury in his first-round match.
But his problems predated that tournament in Chapel Hill, N.C. After improving his record to 12-8 in mid January, Aiello crashed.
“Mentally, I just sort of broke,” Aiello recalled this week at Memorial Gymnasium, where UVA will host two duals this weekend, against Central Michigan (7 p.m. Friday) and Princeton (4 p.m. Saturday).
As a redshirt freshman, Aiello lost seven of his last eight matches to finish with a 13-15 record last season.
“It wasn’t like he didn’t have some good wins,” Virginia head coach Steve Garland said, “but he also had these long stretches of really down times. He was in a dark place last year a couple times, and he was really, really, really struggling.”
Five weeks into the new season, Aiello is in a much brighter place. He’s ranked No. 11 nationally at 197 pounds by InterMat after winning six of seven matches and placing third at the prestigious Cliff Keen Invitational in Las Vegas.
Two of those victories were over Stanford’s Nathan Traxler, who entered the tournament ranked eighth nationally. Another was a major decision over Virginia Tech’s Tom Sleigh, who was then ranked 14th.
Of the wrestlers who finished in the top three of their weight classes in Vegas, Aiello was the only one who entered the tourney unseeded and unranked.
A year earlier, Aiello had gone 0-2 at the Cliff Keen.
“It’s the perfect storyline for the rest of the guys on the team,” Garland said, “to realize how there’s no rule against getting better fast and how you can turn things around.”
Assistant coach Trent Paulson noted this week that Aiello “hasn’t changed a lot in his wrestling,” Garland said. “He’s tightened up a couple things, but more than anything he made a decision mentally. He made a decision that he was going to be gritty, that he was going to be stingy, that he wasn’t going to let guys finish on his legs, that he was going to fight for every point, and that he was going to wrestle through fatigue.
“Wrestling through fatigue is the hardest thing in our sport, and last year he would wilt a little bit mentally. This year, even though he was totally exhausted in so many of those big wins that he had [in Vegas], he never quit. And so what happened was, the other guy quit, because the other guy decided, ‘Wait a second, this dude’s not stopping? I can’t handle this myself.’ “
After being ousted in the ACC tournament last March, Aiello had surgery to repair his injured shoulder. “I didn’t wrestle live again until the beginning of October,” he said, and that proved beneficial.
“I think it was big for me to get away from wrestling for a little,” Aiello said, “because ever since my junior year in high school I’d been just going, going, going, from one sport to another, and training, training, training. So it was good to give my body a break when I was in a sling.”
Once he was out of the sling, however, Aiello trained with renewed energy.
“What he did during that six-month layoff was incredible,” Garland said. “Anything he could do that he was cleared medically to do, he was going to do it, and he was going to do it as hard as he possibly could.”
Aiello was a fixture in the wrestling room at Onesty Hall – the wrestling program has since relocated to Mem Gym – and “ran every day on his own,” Garland said. “So when he finally did get cleared to wrestle, his body was in such good shape, fitness-wise, that the wrestling wasn’t that hard for him to come back.
“Most guys get depressed when they get injured. They say, ‘Well, I’m not part of the team,’ and they disconnect themselves. Jay didn’t do that. He was at every practice, even if he was just able to watch.”
Born and raised in Northern Virginia, Aiello starred in two sports at Westfield High School, where his football teammates included Brian Delaney, now the starting kicker at UVA. As a senior, Aiello helped Westfield capture the 6A title in football and was honored as the state player of the year in that classification.
On the defensive line, Aiello dominated, and when “the playoffs came around we started to play him at fullback too,” Delaney recalled Thursday, “and he did really well there as well, to our surprise. It was not really a surprise, but because he was a D-lineman it was fun to mess with him about athleticism, although he was definitely one of the best athletes on the team.”
Aiello received accolade after accolade for his athletic prowess, Delaney said, and his football teammates “kept finding ourselves saying congrats to him whenever we saw him. By the end of the season, to have some fun, there were many times we would get everyone around to clap and cheer for him and say, ‘Congrats, Jay,’ when he would enter a room. His senior year it got to the point that whenever most people on the team and many friends off the team would see Jay we would just greet him with ‘Congrats, Jay.” That’s still how I say hi to him when I see him.”
In wrestling, Aiello compiled a career record of 139-39 and as a senior won a state wrestling championship at 195 pounds.
He’s from a wrestling-mad family, and Aiello decided to pursue that sport in college. He nearly ended up at Division III Wheaton College, about 30 miles west of Chicago. His parents are Wheaton alumni, as are Aiello’s three brothers, and all of the men wrestled there.
His brothers now live in the Chicago area, which is also home to most members of his father’s family. Aiello favorite professional teams have Chicago addresses too – Bears, Cubs, Blackhawks and Bulls – but he formed a strong bond with Garland during the recruiting process and wasn’t pressured to attend Wheaton.
“My parents were pretty lenient on letting me choose where I wanted to go,” Aiello said, and he decided to become a Cavalier.
“Garland’s awesome, and I really liked the program here,” Aiello said. “It’s a good school, and it’s closer to home.”
He redshirted in 2016-17, posting a 19-11 record while competing unattached. This season, he’s 8-2, with losses to Wyoming’s Cale Davidson (at the Journeymen Duals) and Nebraska’s Eric Schultz (at the Cliff Keen Invitational). Aiello defeated Schultz at the Journeymen Duals.
Another significant test awaits Aiello this weekend. Princeton’s 197-pounder, Patrick Brucki, is ranked No. 5 nationally. “I’m really looking forward to that,” Aiello said.
An economics major, Aiello lives with teammates Jack Mueller, Sam Martino and Michael Murphy. Mueller and Martin are also econ majors, and Murphy is in the McIntire School of Commerce
This is one of the more talented teams Garland has had in his 13 seasons as head coach at his alma mater. It’s also one of the least experienced. The Wahoos start only one senior, 184-pounder Will Schany, and Mueller, who placed fifth last month at the U23 world freestyle championships in Romania, is redshirting this season.
The ‘Hoos figure to be considerably stronger in 2018-19, but that’s not a topic they discuss among themselves, Aiello said. “We’re pretty focused on what’s at hand this year. You deal with what you’ve got right now. Don’t look to the future.”
Garland understands his team will experience some growing pains this season. He pointed to late-match decisions that resulted in losses for true freshman 174-pounder Robert Patrick and redshirt sophomore 133-pounder Brian Courtney in Las Vegas.
“You’re going to see the inexperience show its head,” Garland said. “You’re going to see the talent and the eagerness to win and the belief in themselves, but then you’re also going to see silly mistakes.”
Against Oklahoma’s Anthony Madrigal, Courtney led for most of the match, Garland said. “He’s dominating the pace of the match. He’s doing absolutely everything right. There’s literally less than 20 seconds left, and he gets overaggressive. Instead of shutting down the match and knee-sprawling, he reaches, and the kid takes him down with one second left.
“That’s something you need to go through and experience. You need to get in those matches and figure out a way to win. Last year, Jay Aiello was in those situations, so maybe that’s one of the reasons you’re seeing him turn those close ones around this year.”