BETHLEHEM — The goal for Pleasant Valley senior Andrew Mihalichko was to always qualify for the PIAA wrestling tournament.

Unfortunately, that didn’t come to fruition on Saturday morning at the Northeast Regional 3A tournament.

Mihalichko, at 285, bowed out of regionals after suffering his second loss of the tournament to Crestwood’s Kyle Draina 6-0 in the second round of consolations at Liberty’s Memorial Gymnasium.

It was a match that fell apart for Mihalichko in the third period, as a scoreless tie was broken when he was penalized for a technical violation, then hit with two stalling calls in a five-second span to give Draina a 2-0 lead.

Draina capped off the match with an escape and the only takedown with 40 seconds left, ending Mihalichko’s season with a 26-11 record.

It may have been a disappointing finish to the season, but it was a sign of progress for the program qualifying Mihalichko and Evan Gillespie (215) to regionals for the first time, and head coach James Weiss sees things heading in the right direction.

“I think the kids are buying in, the families in town are buying in and I think people were buying in before last weekend,” said Weiss. “We finished 10th at districts and looking through the records, I think the best we’ve done in the past decade is 19th. So we see a big jump there, we have a female wrestler [Juliette Trout] qualify for states and that’s not on all us. I think that’s the community buying in and saying let’s turn this into a wrestling town.”

Both Mihalichko and Gillespie finished sixth at districts a year ago, before finishing fourth and third respectively, last week to breath another week of wrestling into the program.

Gillespie was knocked out on Friday with consecutive losses, getting pinned by Pleasant Valley’s Lincoln Bibla in 4:19 in his opener, before closing out the gym with a 6-1 defeat to East Stroudsburg South’s Jasiah Rodriguez.

Gillespie, a junior, finished this season with a 30-7 mark, and will be the Bears top candidate to return next year for a bid to qualify for Hershey.