By Michael Letendre
Bristol Eastern graduated seniors Mason Lishness, Tommy Nichols, and Aaron Morocho have done it all for the Lancers wrestling program over an amazing three-year window.
The trio saw Eastern win Class L championships over their freshman and sophomore campaigns, helping the program win three consecutive CCC South titles in the process.
In fact, Lishness, Nichols and Morocho never have loss in a CCC South meet.
And the group was primed and ready for a huge senior season in 2020-21.
In fact, Eastern head coach Bryant Lishness thought this group was capable of another Class L title with a team of about a dozen seniors.
Off the 2020 Class L Wrestling championships, Lishness was the runner-up at 120 pounds, Morocho came in third at 126 while Nichols also placed third (138) as the trio was looking for a huge push as senior competitors.
However, the pandemic foiled the high-risk sports of the winter season and the CIAC could not find the time – or opportunity – to sneak in at least a partial wrestling campaign during the early spring.
However, the road continues for Lishness, Nichols, and Morocho as all three grapplers will continue to wrestle collegiately.
Lishness will attend Castleton University while Nichols and Morocho are American International College bound this fall.
“Aaron, Mason and Tommy have been close friends through wrestling,” said Bryant Lishness. “They all started at the Bristol Gladiators together. And those three have probably gone to five, six, seven-hundred matches together from the youth level, all the way through high school to wrestling camps and clinics.”
“They have thousands of hours together and they’re friends off the mat to. They all hang out and it’s kind of nice that these three who have been wrestling together since they were little boys are now graduating together and they’re the three that are continuing on to go wrestle.”
The three were on several collegiate program’s radars over the years as the Bristol Eastern wrestling squad has been one of the model teams in all of Connecticut.
And several schools would have welcomed all three of the Eastern grapplers into their respective programs.
“I know coach [Rich] Hasenfus up at AIC. He was reaching out quite a bit, actually, on all three of them,” said Lishness. “Castleton and Sacred Heart were also reaching out. I mean, all of them were getting interest from the same schools.”
Mason was part of the lightweight crew from Eastern that proved to be an extremely tough wheelhouse to top.
Being the son of a high school wrestling coach meant Mason hit the mats from an early age and off his success, Castleton University in Vermont proved to be the best fit for the senior.
“He was looking at so many different schools,” said Lishness of Mason. “From Sacred Heart, to Castleton, to Alvernia [University] down in Pennsylvania…those were probably his top three and he settled on Castleton with coach [Scott] Legacy. I think it’s a good fit.”
“It’s a small school, really solid program, Hall of Fame coach. Mason just felt really comfortable.”
Mason could compete at the 133 or 141-pound divisions as the weights change from the scholastic to collegiate ranks.
It will certainly be different than the 120-pound class he competed at in high school but he’s a bit bigger from the last time he hit the mats scholastically.
“We’ll see” in terms of weight class for Mason at Castleton. “He’s growing as all the guys are as high school ended. They’ve all put on some weight, some size, and boys grow a little slower than girls. They’re all getting a little bigger.”
Mason has been wrestling here, there, and everywhere for years and Castleton – an NCAA Division III program – is simply the next step in his wrestling education.
“He’s always talked about it,” said Lishness of Mason’s desire to wrestle collegiately. “He’s been wrestling his whole life, obviously being around it. He just likes being a member of a team, likes being a member of a program and all the things that come with it. It’s the brotherhood, the camaraderie, and all that.”
“I kind of thought he was going to do it and I think he’s happy about where he’s going to go.”
Like Mason, Nichols is a bulldog, and the perennial Connecticut state level performer has been wrestling at a few tournaments this year without the scholastic season commencing.
AIC will give Nichols plenty of opportunities and he’ll join several grapplers from the Nutmeg State who will help him along the way.
“I know Tommy got some athletic money,” said Lishness. “It’s [NCAA] Division II and he knows some of the kids who are on the team [like] JoJo Gonzalez is there. He was an All-American last year. He’s a Connecticut kid. Sean Johnson, another Connecticut kid is there. There are right around the weights Tommy is projected to be. He’ll have great practice partners right off the hit.”
That would put Nichols somewhere in the 149 to 157 pound weight class collegiately.
And AIC isn’t that far from Bristol, less than an hour’s drive to downtown Springfield, Massachusetts.
“He’s close to home,” said Lishness. “Tommy’s very close to his family. It’s far enough away where he can’t just come home but close enough where you can come home at a drop of a hat, too. I think it’s a good fit for him.”
Morocho is another Eastern grappler who put in the work and was rewarded with a chance to compete at the NCAA Division II level.
And make no mistake, Morocho is going to perform extremely well at AIC.
The grappler, like the entire trio, has been putting the work in locally and the results have led to a spot with a tremendous New England program.
“Aaron’s been doing a lot of work at Ascension Wrestling Academy in Bristol,” said Lishness. “Mason has, Will Hamilton [and] a lot of Bristol kids have [put in] work there. Jeff Haddad and Este Lara are both AIC alumni and they wrestled [at AIC]. I think Aaron has grown very close to both of them, particularly Este Lara, and I think that was a part of him picking AIC for sure.”
Morocho is going to be wrestling scholastically right around a similar weight to Nichols.
And Lishness knew that youngest of the Morocho crew was going to be a very successful member of the Bristol Eastern wrestling program as he always hits the mat with zest.
“Aaron is the younger brother of Danny and Luis Morocho, so we knew he was going to be special,” said Lishness. “We got him very young at the [Bristol] Gladiators. He stuck with it all the way though.”
The Lancers won state titles with the likes of Lishness, Nichols and Morocho in and around the program.
And that grouping of grapplers helped turn a close meet into something vastly different on the scoreboard once those points via pins and decisions were all tabulated by the trio.
“The three were winners you relied on all the time,” said Lishness. “You get spoiled as a coach when, no matter what’s going on in the match, you’ve got kids like that coming up. And if other team’s steal a win here or there, you know that there’s certain guys that are going to pull through for you. I’ve been fortunate to have kids like that. Last season [in 2020], we had Mason and Aaron back-to-back as well as Tommy in that line-up back-to-back with Alex Marshall.”
“When you get line-ups like that, you’re going to be really tough to beat in dual meets because you can’t just get on a roll against a team like that when you have kids that are seasoned who win and are point producers for you.”
But this is not the end of the road for the trio in terms of wrestling against each other.
There’s a very good chance the friends will be competing at two or three of the same meets next season as collegiate wrestling gets back to normal.
“They’ll probably see each other wrestling next year,” said Lishness. “AIC is the only NCAA Division II [program] in New England and they hit a lot of New England tournaments as well. They’ll be at the Doug Parker Invitational, they’ll be at the Southern Maine [Ted Reis] or at another one of those [events]. These guys will be seeing each other some weekends on the college circuit.”
“I just think that’s a pretty special [thing]. They came through the Gladiators and now there all heading off together to bigger and better things.”
