Upper St. Clair Wrestler Wins KDKA Award

A KDKA camera crew visited Wednesday to present the KDKA Extra Effort Award to wrestler Austin Wilding.

The senior came in sixth place at the PIAA wrestling championship in Hershey last weekend and has received straight A's at school. His weighted GPA is 4.6.

Wilding is also part of Athletes Taking Action and co-founder of Zoom. For the past three years, Zoom has raised money to purchase medical equipment to send to Haiti earthquake victims and impoverished parts of India.

"He probably has the top resume I've seen," KDKA sports anchor Bob Pompeani said. "He has it all."

Pompeani was pleased with the senior crowd that turned out to watch the award presentation.

"It's (the Upper St. Clair crowd) always good. Always enthusiastic," he said.

"It's been pretty awesome. I've been to pep assemblies for the football team, but never for wrestling," Wilding said. "I enjoyed it; it was a lot of fun."

Wilding said the interviews he had to do to apply for West Point prepared him for the interviews with Pompeani.

"It's cool being interviewed by him when you see him on TV all the time," Wilding said.

Wilding set and surpassed his senior year wrestling goals. He wanted to get 100 career wins and he finished with 113 wins. He also wanted to qualify for the state tournament and he ended up coming in sixth place.

"If you would have told me I was going to finish sixth at the beginning of the year I would have been so pumped," Wilding said.

He was also pleased to qualify for the tournament with his two teammates, and John Kyriacopoulos, because they have all been wrestling together since age 8 or 9.

"It was the perfect way to end the season," Wilding said.

Wilding is the oldest of seven in his family. His parents are Jim and Carla.

Share your congratulations with Austin! Tell him in the comments.