Five area wrestlers will get their first taste of the highest tournament in New York State when they hit the mat for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Division I tournament on Friday and Saturday at the MVP Arena on Friday and Saturday.

Valley Central’s Luke Satriano (102 pounds) and Nick Weeden (110) became the first multiple Vikings to go to states since the mid-2000s when they won the Section 9 championship in their respective weight classes.

“I’m on the stat team and I’m excited to be with my boys (Nick and Sebastian),” Satriano said. “I’ll see where that takes me.”

The other three – Valley Central’s Sebastian Vidacovich (126), Wallkill’s Rocco Futia (118) and Pine Bush’s Brayden Pennell (189) qualified for the tournament by finishing second, or in some cases true second.

“It’s a good feeling,” Vidacovich said. “I feel like I’ve wrestled hard this season, and I feel like I definitely deserve to go. I put in a lot of work over the offseason. I wrestle year-round. So, I feel like this is right where I want to be.”

Under the new system, Section 9 had two automatic qualifiers in a system based on how many points a section scores during the tournament on a three-year average. Sections 8 (Nassau County) and 11 (Suffolk County) are at the top of the list so they send three wrestlers.

Section 9 is in the middle of the pack and gets to send two.

“The better you do, the more chance you have of getting those three qualifiers,” Section 9 coordinator Jeff Cuilty said. “So, if we run off a string of two or three years in a row with a lot of placers, we might knock off one of the Section 8 or 11 teams and be able to bring our top 3 instead of top 2.”

Under the old system, which Cuilty designed, was based on a points system, and every coach and chairman had to make sure every point was calculated correctly. It got messy.

“We had parents suing us because they said we missed a point or something like this and they’re arguing with the criteria,” Cuilty said. “So, we decided the better way to do this is wrestle your way in. Every kid who’s going to the state tournament this year knew what match they had to win to get to states. If they won the match, they’re going; if they lost the match they’re not.”

Futia placed third in the sectional tournament, and pinned Minisink Valley’s Sofia Macaluso to clinch his berth in the tournament. Pennell placed second but had to defeat third-place finisher - Goshen’s Max Winkler – to take his state berth.

Futia and Pennell are the lone representatives from their teams. Futia’s younger brother, Marco had his own opportunity to wrestle for a state berth at 102 pounds, but he lost his true second match to Newburgh’s Cooper Merli.

“Marco will be there, anyway.”

“I was hoping he’d get through,” Futia said. “Him and Cooper have wrestled a bunch. Cooper’s had the better of him the last few years, but I’m glad they got to wrestle again.”

The tournament will begin at 10 a.m. with Friday’s first three rounds, ending in the quarterfinals. The consolation Wrestlebacks will begin after the quarterfinals end.

Semifinalists and consolation finalists will make it to Saturday.

“We know it’s going to be tough,” Vidacovich said. “There’s a lot of kids that are going up there from all around New York State, but we all know that we have the ability to wrestle good. We’re just going up there and we’re going to wrestle as tough as we can to try and win.”