Owen J. Roberts' D'Orsaneo poised to fulfill lofty expectations

Demetri D'Orsaneo and his dentists have become great friends over the last three years.

The senior, 138-pound wrestler at Owen J. Roberts has had his front teeth knocked out somewhere around 15 times by his own count, making him a valued customer at Wallace & Wolitarsky Dental Associates in Morgantown.

"I had a lot of problems keeping my two front teeth in [early in my career]," he said. "I was best friends with all of the dentists in there. They'd have to come in at nighttime past hours because I had to get my teeth glued in before meets the next day."

D'Orsaneo enters the District 1 Class AAA West Tournament, which begins Saturday at Spring-Ford, as the No. 1 seed at 138 pounds. The tournament is the first step on the road to the state tournament two weeks from now in Hershey.

The battle to keep his smile intact was nothing compared with taking on the high expectations greeting D'Orsaneo in high school, however.

D'Orsaneo enjoyed a highly successful middle-school campaign that ended in a Pennsylvania Junior Wrestling championship, the equivalent to a junior-high state title. The Pottstown native was the first PJW champ to enter Owen J. Roberts. And he faced the expectations that came with that, despite competing in the 132-pound weight class, which featured many experienced older wrestlers.

"I came into ninth-grade year with pretty high expectations," D'Orsaneo said. "I had to take a step back. It really humbled me to see how good kids were in high school, and I had to stop thinking I was all that. In high school, I had to work 10 times harder to get where I'm at today."

After finishing his freshman year at regionals without qualifying for states, D'Orsaneo struggled through his sophomore year because of back injuries and his persistant dental problems. He came up one match short of reaching the state tournament.

D'Orsaneo searched for answers, and found them that summer at the J Robinson Intensive Wrestling Camp in Edinboro.

The 14-day camp, led by Minnesota coach J Robinson was designed to "break" wrestlers through hard, long practices that started at 5:30 a.m.

D'Orsaneo entered the camp with about 300 other wrestlers, and he said about half finished.

"The camp definitely gave me a spark to work harder," D'Orsaneo said. "In the past, I was going off of how hard other kids were working around me, but once I went to that camp I gained my own level of intensity and set the bar for myself."

The shift in intensity was felt not only by D'Orsaneo, but his coach.

"He started hitting the weights harder, he started conditioning harder, and his technique improved," coach Stephen Derafelo said. "I've got 30 kids on my team and we've got some pretty good kids, but he wants to win every sprint. By far, he wins more sprints than anyone else on the team."

Derafelo also recalls an added intensity to D'Orsaneo's sparring habits.

"He had [former Owen J. Roberts wrestler Colby Frank], who was a pretty intense kid himself," Derafelo said. "The two of them would literally start in one quarter of the room and just run through and knock people over. I was fearful they would get hurt because those two wouldn't stop. Every day one of them would go into a wall."

It's easy to see why D'Orsaneo's teammates think his potential is limitless during tournament season.

"He can accomplish anything," senior Dominick Petrucelli said. "Whatever he puts his mind to, he can do."