SMYRNA – Gabe Giampietro arrived on the high school sports scene with a proven reputation from his days in the Smyrna Little Wrestlers program.
He then quickly demonstrated he wasn’t satisfied having just been a youth wrestling phenom.
The Smyrna High freshman earned the Outstanding Wrestler Award in his first high school competition. He won the 106-pound title when he actually weighed about 100 pounds at the 2018 Ray Oliver Invitational at the McDonough School in Maryland.
Giampietro recently wrapped up his Smyrna wrestling career with his fourth state title and is The News Journal’s Wrestler of the Year.
Those first impressions at that Maryland event turned out to be lasting ones as Giampietro went on to finish with a school record of 139-10, which includes a limited junior year schedule due to COVID-19 protocols.
“He’s wrestling a nationally ranked kid in the finals who was like me in a 106 body,” said Smyrna coach Aaron Harris, meaning Giampietro’s opponent that day, McDonough’s Richard Fedalen, who was more physically mature.
“I’m looking at Gabe, who looks 12. What I wanted him to do was go out there and not get pinned. But in his brain he was going out there to win. My brain didn’t know his brain yet,” said Harris, who was in his first season as Smyrna coach after coming over from Dover.
Giampietro prevailed 6-5 for the first of three Oliver titles in as many tries.
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“He goes out there, gets on top, slaps this cradle over and flips him,” Harris recalled. “First high school tournament against a nationally ranked kid. And I said to myself: ‘I have to trust my wrestlers more. I have to not doubt them, because he had no doubt in his brain.’ ”
Giampietro’s confidence had been earned from years of practice and competition since he was 7.
His dad, Paul, first took Gabe to a Smyrna Little Wrestlers workout when he was 6 because brother Mike, two years older, was already involved. But Gabe came away disappointed, expecting WWE-type professional wrestling.
“I was like, ‘Where’s the big ring?’ ” he recalled. “I don’t want to do it if I can’t jump off the top rope and punch people.”
Another try a year later worked and Giampietro was smitten.
“The Smyrna Little Wrestlers built me into the wrestler I am today,” said Giampietro. “I give all the credit in the world to Damien [Craighton]. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be where I am today. He made everything so fun.”
Craighton is the former William Penn four-time state champion who coaches the Smyrna Little Wrestlers. Among that group, along with Giampietro, was Jackson Dean, who is two years older and won three state titles at Caesar Rodney, and Joey Nataracola, who is a year older and took three state titles at Smyrna.
“We were all so competitive with each other, all around about the same weight, though I was the smallest,” Giampietro said. “We always wrestled together. It was just off the wall. We could get so mad at each other we’d want to fist fight on the mat. Then we’d spend the night at each other’s houses. It was amazing and that drove us to get better.”
As a fifth-grader, the unranked Giampietro won a Virginia Challenge tournament title by knocking off wrestlers who were ranked fourth, 10th and second nationally. He went on to to win numerous Upper Chesapeake Wrestling League titles through middle school and place in regional and national competition.
In addition to starting his high school career with a bang, Giampietro finished that first season by placing second among freshmen at 106 pounds in the high school nationals.
“He was as tough a wrestler then as he is now,” Harris said. “He’s grown a lot wrestling wise but what he’s done more is he’s matured … He’s expected to win every time he goes out there. That’s a hell of a challenge.”
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At the 2022 DIAA Individual Wrestling Championships at Cape Henlopen High, Giampietro pinned his way to the 120-pound championship in bouts that required just 1:51, :54, :59 and 2:27 to complete.
That made him Delaware’s 11th four-time state champion, with Caravel 160-pounder Alex Poore later becoming the 12th.
Giampietro won titles at 106 pounds as a freshman and sophomore and 113 pounds as a junior.
He’d pinned his way to the finals before scoring an 8-0 final-round decision in 2021 over Milford’s Trevor Copes.
“The first shot he took, something cracked in my ankle,” Giampietro said of that match. “So I wrestled with pretty much no ankle that whole match. He shot a low single and it rolled . . . It hurt a lot but I just kept pushing through it.
“By the time the match was over, I could barely stand and I was carried off the mat and straight to the trainer’s room. I like that title a lot just because of that. I battled through that.”
As a sophomore, Giampietro had two pins and two technical falls en route to the state title. As a freshman he had a pin, a technical fall and 11-1 and 12-0 decisions.
“That’s just setting the standard for how far I’ve come,” Giampietro said of his state tournament dominance.
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Eight of his 10 career losses – plus even more wins – came in the nation’s two most competitive high school tournaments, the Walsh Jesuit Ironman in Ohio, where he was third at 106 in 2019, and Delaware’s Beast of the East, where he placed seventh as a freshman and fourth as a sophomore at 106 and was runner-up at 120 as a senior. There was no Beast his junior year.
No wonder that the first morning NCAA rules permitted contact for recruiting, Giampietro woke up to more than 15 text messages from Division I coaches.
He eventually chose Drexel University in Philadelphia over Navy, George Mason, Maryland, North Carolina State and Tennessee-Chattanooga.
“They showed the interest,” Giampietro said of Drexel’s persistence. “Even after I committed, they still showed up to see my fourth state title. Coach Matt Azevedo took time out of his own day, even though I was committed and signed.”
Drexel competes in the rugged Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association that features national powers such as Lehigh and Cornell. It also happens to be where Creighton wrestled as a collegian, winning 100 matches from 1997 to 2000.
The lightest college weight class is 125 pounds. Giampietro, who could have wrestled at 113 as a Smyrna senior, knows he is presently at a physical disadvantage and will work to erase that.
“In college, you know everybody around you is just as good as you, if not better,” he said. “It’s gonna be a brawl every match. My main challenge is how do I get to the next level? I’m good at the high school level. It’s that collegiate step. How am I gonna get there?
“I’m not there at all yet. I definitely need to get a lot of weight-training going, get on that level of strength. I’m a pretty fast wrestler but everyone is so fast and so strong and so technically sound [in college].’’
Harris, who competed and coached at the collegiate level, has no doubt Giampietro has what it takes.
“He’s a complete wrestler,” Harris said. “He’s good on his feet, can get off bottom, is great on top. I think his riding ability will really take him over the top.
“He’s just scratching the surface.”
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