Manville Wrestling Quad Meet

Justin Petti

On Saturday, January 22nd the Mustangs held a quad meet in the Manville High School gym. Up first the Mustangs would face East Brunswick. The match against East Brunswick started at heavyweight where Marvin Valverde got a forfeit. Once Manville got the lead they never looked back as Lorenzo Sanchez, Brandon Rivera, Brandon Flores, David Peterson, Lucas Velando, Danny Wildgoose, Jacob Riley, and Geoffrey Mathis all pinned their kids or tech falled their kids.

At 157 pounds, Junior Tyler Lozier won his match 10-9 in an ultimate tiebreaker. The Mustangs went on to beat East Brunswick 65-9. For the Mustang’s second match they faced their biggest challenge of the year so far facing the Franklin Warriors. The match started at 106 pounds and the warriors got off to a hot start with a pin. But that pin was followed by a huge win from Senior, Nick Lombardino by the score of 1-0. The warriors pinned at 120 pounds to take a 12-3 lead. At 126, Brandon Rivera won 7-5 in a sudden victory. The warriors won 132 by pin. The Mustangs were down 18-6. But then the Pin parade started as Brandon Flores, David Peterson, and Trip Freitag all won by pin. The warriors gave up a forfeit at 157 and just like that the Mustangs were up 30-18. Jacob Riley and Geoffrey Mathis would also go on to pin their kids and the Mustangs beat the number 3 ranked group 5 team in the state 42-30.

For the Mustang’s final match of the day, they went up against Rutgers prep. The match started off at 133 where Nick Lombardino won via pin. At 120,126,132 the Mustangs won by forfeit. At 138 Junior Tyler Canica won via pin to get his first Varsity Wrestling to win. At 144, Brandon Flores won via decision 3-2. At 150 the Mustangs got a forfeit. At 157 Trip Freitag won via decision 4-2. At 165 Lucas Velando won by decision 4-3. At 175 Danny Wildgoose won by decision 8-3. At 190 the Mustangs got a forfeit. At 215 Marvin Valverde won his match via pin. And to close out the match the Mustangs received two forfeits at heavyweight and 106 pounds. The Mustangs beat Rutgers Prep 72-0.

Also with the win over Franklin, Coach Gorbatuk got his 200th career win as a head coach. The Mustangs are now 10-0 and wrestle Pingry on Wednesday the 26th for the Skyland Conference championship.