HERSHEY - This is it.

You've survived the grind of the regular season. Battled through the district and regional tournaments, all for a shot to make it here.Congratulations. Now the real work begins.The PIAA Championships offer equal parts promise and peril, which was showcased on the opening day of the tournament.Northwestern's Colin Rex and Jackson Bernhard, competing in their first state tournament, suffered setbacks in Thursday morning's Class 2A preliminary bouts.Rex lost his 132-pound prelim 6-0 to Line Mountain's Collin Klinger. Bernhard fell 9-5 in his 143-pound bout to Line Mountain's Kenny Boyer."They wrestled hard, and they were in both matches," said Northwestern head coach Jim Moll.After a scoreless first period, Klinger scored an escape to open the second and padded his advantage with two back points. Klinger got three more back points in the third period to set the final score."He's very, very strong," Rex said of Klinger. "And I've never been great with really strong guys."I just couldn't really get hand control, or get anything going. He's very quick and strong, and it was hard to get anything going."Boyer used a fast start against Bernhard, scoring within the first 10 seconds for an early 2-0 lead.The Line Mountain senior upped his lead to 4-1 at the end of the first period.Bernhard responded with a quick score to open the second period that made it 4-3. But Boyer again surged ahead, building a 9-3 lead at the end of the second period with a takedown and three back points, a deficit Bernhard couldn't overcome."A lot of times I end up starting my matches a little slow, and I play catch-up a lot," said Bernhard. "I just need to keep working hard, and hopefully I can come back and win some matches."Slow start aside, Moll liked what he saw from Bernhard."Jackson showed he can wrestle with him," said Moll. "He took him down twice, got out, got a reversal. He just needs to do that from the very beginning instead of waiting until the second period."But the tournament is much more than the outcome of just one match.Though Bernahrd and Rex lost their preliminary bouts inside the Giant Center, the two are still alive in the consolation bracket and will later this afternoon.First round matches will be held later Thursday morning, and will be followed by first round consolation bouts at 1:15 p.m.