Delaware has another Beast of the East wrestling champ in odd repeat from 2022

Delaware waited 10 years to have a Beast of the East wrestling champion before last year.

It already has another, with an unusual number of similarities.

Salesianum School senior James Miller won the 215-pound title in the 30th edition of the nationally acclaimed event Sunday at the Carpenter Center.

Miller’s only disappointment was he didn’t get to wrestle a championship match, due to a forfeit by top-seeded Hudson Skove of Rumson-Fair Haven Regional in New Jersey. He had a back injury.

But impressive quarterfinal and semifinal wins earlier in the day by Miller over the No. 2 and 3 seeds helped make it a very satisfying day.

“It’s exciting,” Miller said. “I’ve worked really hard over the course of years to get this far. It’s definitely nice to see it payoff.”

Worth the effort

Ironically, when Miller’s former Salesianum teammate Max Agresti won last year as a senior, he also defeated Skove in the 215-pound final.

“He’s always been a tough wrestler,” Salesianum coach Cameron Davis said of Miller. “He worked his butt off. He traveled a lot this year. He went to Fargo [for Junior Nationals] and missed placing there by a match.

“You get that experience and that competition, then you can come here and it’s the same. They’re used to that grind.”

BEAST OF THE EAST: See brackets here

Family business

Miller is one of 10 kids – nine of them boys – in a family full of wrestlers. Brother John was a state runner-up in 2014 and Joe was a 2016 state champ. Both also wrestled at Sallies.

“My older brother [Joe] placed at Beast when I was a little kid and I remember jut saying ‘I’m going to place at Beast someday.’ ”

James has a pair of third-place finishes in the state meet, at 220 pounds as a sophomore and 190 last year. He was sixth as a freshman in 2020 at 195.

He also took eighth in the Beast of the East as a sophomore in 2021 at 220 but struggled with cutting to 195 and didn’t place last year at Beast.

Good company

During those past three seasons, Miller shared the wrestling room with Agresti, who won state titles at 195 in 2022 and 215 last year. Agresti, now a freshman wrestler at Harvard, last year became Delaware’s first Beast of the East champ since Smyrna’s Brent Fleetwood in 10 years, winning at 215.

Miller and Agresti did not frequently wrestle in practice, simply because of different styles, Davis said “but the result is the same.”

IT'S A BEAST: Tournament brings country's top high school wrestlers to Newark

“I can be a little intense during practice,” said Miller, who called himself a “nose-to-the-grindstone, beat-kids-up type of guy.”

The advice Miller frequently heard as he sought to improve as wrestler was “Move your feet, move your feet,” said Davis. Miller used those feet to climb on to the podium, which was the easy part.

“Max had great footwork and Max did help him with that, because that’s what transformed Max,” Davis said. “When you’re on your feet, making sure you’re moving your feet right so that when you take a shot it’s powerful, it’s explosive. Some guys take shots and their feet are all over the place . . . It keeps you in good position.”

Toppling top seeds

Miller’s performance allowed Salesianum to win the Governor’s Cup as the top-scoring Delaware squad for the second year in a row. Blair Academy of New Jersey, which had won 19 straight Beast titles before not taking part last year, was team champ again.

Miller was the only top-eight finisher among First State competitors in an event brought more than 800 wrestlers from 163 high schools to Delaware. Three others were one win away from placing – Sussex Central’s Malachi Stratton (113), Cape Henlopen’s Patrick Donahue (215) and Delaware Military Academy’s Caleb DeNigris (285).

The 7th-seeded Miller was the lone Delaware wrestler to reach the quarterfinals. There, he broke a 1-1 third-period tie with a takedown and then pinned No. 2-seeded Baron Leonard of Eastside in Taylors, South Carolina.

TOP 5: Counting down Delaware's top 15 high school football stadiums

He followed a similar script in his semifinal match. Miller’s third-period takedown inched him ahead 3-1 with 30 seconds left. He held on after giving up an escape for a 3-2 win over third-seeded Aidan Schlett of New Jersey’s Saint Joseph Regional.

He spent much of those two matches on his feet before seeing an opportunity and taking advantage.

“The most important thing is you have to stay focused, make sure you’re in the right position,” Miller said, “and as soon as they open up make your move.”

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware has Beast of the East champ in Salesianum's James Miller