The postseason is all about peaking at the right time.

Few know that better than Palmerton’s Dillon Lombardi.

A year ago, Lombardi made a run to the Class 2A finals at the District 11 wrestling tournament as the sixth-seed. That momentum propelled Lombardi to a seventh-place finish at regionals and the doorstep of a trip to the state tournament.

With this year’s district tournament set to get underway tonight, the senior enters focused and self-assured as the No. 2 seed at 172 pounds, having put together the best season of his career.

“My expectations are that I want to be in the finals,” said Lombardi. “Being seeded second, I feel like I have a good route all the way through. The end goal is 100 wins, state qualifier, state placer. And I want to start with getting to the finals this weekend. I think that would be awesome.

“Last year gave me a lot more confidence, because I know I can hang with some of those state qualifiers. Like Chase Stephen (of Tri Valley, who was seeded second), I beat in the semis last year, and he ended up getting to states. I know I’m that caliber of wrestler.”

Lombardi, who is a career best 34-6 this season and sits at 96 career wins entering the weekend, has made tremendous strides on the mat after back-to-back 20 win campaigns. A year ago, he was 16-4 in matches decided by decision and 5-7 in contests that ended with a pin.

This season, Lombardi is 15-1 in matches finished with a pin, 3-0 in bouts that are decisions and 11-3 in contests that ended via technical fall after going 1-0 in such situations last year.

“Offseason stuff has helped me so much,” said Lombardi. “I missed maybe two lifts over the offseason. I was there almost every day, as much as I could be. I was just trying to work as hard as I could to get as strong as possible. And I think it’s really helped me in every way. My neutral is better, my top is better; on bottom, I pretty much just stand up most of the time. Just being stronger has helped me so much.”

And Lombardi has a solid team around him. Derek King, who already reached 100 career wins this season, is seeded second at 152 pounds, Dillon Anthony is third at 160, Connor Messinger is fourth at 114 and Vincent Taglieri is fourth at 139.

“You just have to go into it thinking like any other tournament,” said King. “You just have to have the same mindset of advancing every round. You just have to believe in yourself and your ability, and know that you put the hard work in, and that’s where you get confidence from.”

King is also enjoying a career year, hitting 30 wins for the first time (30-5), and will be looking to reach regionals for the second time in his career this weekend.

The Bombers have fed off that type of success, which helped the team reach the semifinals of the District 11 team tournament.

“You can tell, at dual meets, tournaments, when one guy is doing well, it excites the whole team to do well,” said King. “We all just want to advance and advance and advance. It’s much better doing it as a team than by yourself.”

While King and Lombardi have both cracked 30 wins this season, five other wrestlers have won over 20 matches: Messinger (26-10), Anthony (24-10), Thomas Pasquariello (22-15), Taglieri (21-12) and Josh Merkel (20-15).

“It was different than we’ve done in the past,” said Merkel, a senior. “Compared to the last 13 years of how I’ve wrestled. The practices were different. We had the same goals, but we incorporated the junior high staff with it, and we did a lot of lifting during practices, and a lot of extra conditioning to really push us to that next level. But it paid off. It was probably one of the hardest seasons, but every second of it was definitely worth it.”

Messinger has enjoyed a stellar freshman campaign, one he hopes to continue deep into the postseason.

“I think part of the reason we work so hard is because we have good leaders pushing us, and our coaches push us a lot, too,” said Messinger. “I feel like we work a lot harder than most teams.”

Messinger and the rest of the Bombers know what they put into it is what they’ll get out of it. And they’re ready to cash in.

“If you work hard at practice, it’s going to show,” he said.

******

TOP TIGER ... Northwestern’s Luke Fugazzotto is the top seed at 172 pounds in the Class 2A bracket, meaning a meeting with Lombardi in the finals could be in the cards. Fugazzotto, who is 40-2 this season, has made it to the district final each of the last two years, winning as a freshman. A year ago, he was third at regionals and second at states.

******

GOOD POSITION ... A large contingent of area wrestlers enter the weekend with a solid chance to reach regionals in both Class 2A and 3A. The top four wrestlers in 2A will move on to regionals, while the top five in 3A advance. In addition to the Palmerton wrestlers and Fugazzotto mentioned above, Northwestern’s Weston Killar (2nd, 114) and Colby Townley (2nd, 145), Lehighton’s Lukas Croizier (2nd, 139) and Marc Macias (2nd, 285), Northern Lehigh’s Cody Mazzocca (2nd, 121), Lehighton’s Connor Dugan (3rd, 133), Northwestern’s Nolan Koehler (3rd, 152), Tamaqua’s Aiden Schlier (3rd, 127) and Jacob Hehn (3rd, 189), Northwestern’s Chase Sukanick (4th, 127) and Braydon Uricchio (4th, 133) and Levi Kunkel (4th, 121) are all seeded in the top four in Class 2A. Also in the Class 2A event, Jah Bushati (4th, 152) and Rory Dixon (4th, 160), who attend Marian and wrestle for Mahanoy through a co-op between the schools, are both seeded in the top four. In Class 3A, Jim Thorpe’s Aidan Sterling (3rd, 215), Stephen Korte (5th, 133) and Nikolas Schwartz (5th, 172), along with Pleasant Valley’s Evan Gillespie (4th, 215) are seeded in the top five.

******

GETTING STARTED ... Action for the 2A tournament will take place at Freedom High School Friday night, while the 3A event will take place at Liberty. Wrestling begins at 5 p.m. Friday. Quarterfinals will be held no earlier than 6:30 p.m. On Saturday, the semifinals and third rounds consolations will take place no earlier than 10:15 a.m. The consolation finals (third- and fifth-place matches) will take place at 3 p.m. at Liberty in both tournaments. The Parade of Champions will be held at 4:30 p.m. with the finals in both classes on two mats at Liberty to start at 4:45 p.m.

******

MOVING ON ... The Class 2A Southeast Regional Tournament will take place next Friday and Saturday at Freedom. The Class 3A Northeast Regional will be held Friday and Saturday at Liberty.