Bethlehem Catholic’s grueling December schedule comes with the territory for the wrestling program.

After competing at the King of the Mountain and Beast of the East tournaments to open the first month of the season, Luke Carty and his teammates were able to relish the opportunity of hosting the 48th annual Tony Iasiello Christmas City Wrestling Tournament last week.

The Hawks had little trouble securing the team title with 314 points, blowing past runner-up Cranford (180) in the process, en route to having 13 medalists.

Of those 13 medalists, eight were champions, including Carty, who took home a 4-2 overtime decision over Scranton’s Will Evanitsky in the 120-pound finale.

With the experience Becahi wrestlers have endured through their previous tournaments this season, facing an overtime challenge was nothing out of the ordinary for the gritty Carty, who claimed his second straight holiday crown.

“I thought I could have worked on my setups and attacks a little bit more,” said Carty as he critiqued his performance. “Unfortunately, it got to overtime and I just had to stay tough and a win is a win.”

After failing to place at the Beast of the East, Carty took pride in being able to bounce back from that experience and work on the little things to help propel him to last week’s title.

“After wrestling at two of the best tournaments in the country, it can definitely be hard on you,” he said. “I worked on some things that I needed to improve on and hopefully I got better as a wrestler.”

Luke Karam (126) capped off his reign as a four-time champion at the tournament following a 9-1 major decision over Brian Courtney of Athens in the finals.

On a night where the Becahi wrestling family honored their late and legendary head coach Tony Iasiello, Karam was the lone wrestler wearing a custom “TI” shirt in warmups on the mat.

Coming away with his fourth title on a night that honored the program’s influential head coach meant a little more.

“It means a lot considering how much Tony meant to the program,” Karam said. “I think I wrestled really well in the tournament and I think that’s something Tony would have been proud of.”

In a matchup against Courtney, Karam made the defending PIAA 2A runner-up from a year ago, look pedestrian in his efforts to tame the Becahi senior.

Karam was also awarded the Pat Santoro Outstanding Wrestler Award for the tournament and came away happy with his performance.

“I thought I wrestled pretty well but I’m just building for the rest of the season,” said Karam. “I kept scoring against Brian and that’s been a real focus of mine all year. I just want to keep scoring and getting more points.”

Along with Karam and Carty, the other Hawks to claim gold medals included Sean Redington (106), Joey Gould (138), Cole Karam (152), Mikey Labriola (170), Adam Soldridge (182) and Niko Camacho (285).

Ryan Anderson (113) and Jody Crouse (195) both settled for silver medals, as Anderson fell to Blair Academy’s Mike Madara 2-0 and Crouse lost a 7-5 decision to Devin Evans of Susquehanna Township.

Jarred Papcsy (132) and Stephen Maloney (145) each took third, while Luc Mauro (160) took sixth.

The Hawks blasted Northwestern 65-4 on Saturday and have back-to-back EPC meets Wednesday and Thursday when they travel to Emmaus tonight and then host Whitehall on Thursday.