Thrice as Nice: Southern steamrolls Bridgewater-Raritan for third straight NJSIAA Group 5 wrestling state title

PISCATAWAY — The road was more arduous than usual and featured its share of adversity, but in the end, Southern was right where it wanted to be.

The Rams’ march to a third straight NJSIAA Group 5 state championship was completed on Sunday afternoon at Rutgers University’s Jersey Mike’s Arena with a 58-18 wipeout of Bridgewater-Raritan. The two-time defending champions and presumptive favorite when the season began dominated the entire team tournament to make school history in emphatic fashion.

“It’s a great accomplishment,” Southern head coach Dan Roy said. “It’s our first-ever three-peat and the first time in any sport at our school. We really wanted to get this. It was tough with the injuries this year to stay positive but the kids just kept wrestling and we had kids step up along the way. We’ve been talking about winning a third straight since last summer, so I’m glad we were able to do it.”

“It’s definitely not easy (winning three straight state titles) but I think it’s because we overcame a lot of adversity,” senior Wyatt Stout said. “We’ve had some bumps and bruises and kids out injured and taken some losses we shouldn’t have, but we still overcame it and kept going forward.”

Southern’s state title is the seventh in program history, which is second in the Shore Conference behind Brick Memorial’s nine. Junior Anthony Mason, last season’s 106-pound state runner-up, began the match with a 58-second pin at 113 pounds for his 100th career win. Bridgewater answered with a pin at 120, but the Rams won the next seven bouts with four pins, two major decisions, and one decision to clinch the state title with five bouts left. Sophomore Levi Foote (190) and senior Caleb Counts (285) added pins and freshman Cade Collins put a bow on the dominant championship match with a technical fall at 106 pounds in the final bout.

The Rams finished with a 20-3 record, their most losses in a season since going 20-4 in 2019, a year in which they also won a Group 5 state title. For a program with the championship pedigree and annual expectations that Southern holds, defeats at the hands of Christian Brothers Academy, Rumson-Fair Haven, and St. John Vianney were tough pills to swallow. Injuries mounted, notably with state medalists Hayden Hochstrasser (175) and Bryce Manera (132) out of the lineup for most of the season. There’s a good chance they finish undefeated with a full lineup.

“It’s obvious to wonder what your full potential was but you’ll never know so you can’t spend too much time on it,” Stout said. “We took losses that we should not have and we all came together collectively and said we have to get our stuff together. I think it made our team tougher overall being able to overcome adversity.”

“With the guys who needed to step up, we told them constantly, ‘You’re in the lineup now and you have to do your job’,” Mason said. “And they did their jobs like we expected.”

Manera wrestled in just 10 bouts this season, the last of which was a quad with High Point, West Essex, and Mount Olive on January 4. He finished with an 8-2 record with both losses coming at the prestigious Powerade Tournament. The Bucknell signee was fourth in the state at 132 pounds last season but is done for the year with an ankle injury, Roy confirmed on Sunday. As for Hochstrasser, he weighed in for the Group 5 final and there is an outside chance he will participate in the individual postseason but Roy said his status is still up in the air. A hand injury has limited the two-time state medalist and Army West Point recruit to just four bouts this season. Hochstrasser was the state third-place finisher at 165 pounds last season.

While their absence was most certainly missed, Southern being able to remain a top-10 team in the state and win another state championship without two hammers is a testament to the program’s depth.

“It is, it definitely is,” Roy said. “Just keeping these guys working with us, the young guys, all the time the coaches put in with these kids. I was able to get some of these younger guys in tournaments and because of that they had varsity experience when kids went down.”

“It’s great that I had seniors to take on that role and help the younger kids and keep the team together. The kids really pulled together at the end. When you get a couple losses like that some of the pressure comes off. And when you’re wrestling good competition you find out what you need to work on more and we’ve been able to coach these guys up for the end of the year.”

The three losses are a bit frustrating for the Rams because of the what-if factor, but that will subside. Soon, they’ll raise another banner as Group 5 state champions.

“Everyone loves winning,” Stout said. “And we all had a lot of fun along the way.”

 

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Box Score

Southern 58, Bridgewater-Raritan 18

113: Anthony Mason (S) p. Lucas Pelc, 0:58

120: Andrew Adell (BR) p. Hunter Borer, 1:33

126: Cash McVey (S) p. Zachary Stouffer, 1:24

132: Sam Pari (S) md. Mark Marsigliano, 11-2

138: Scottie Sari (S) p. Logan Levine, 1:51

144: Vincent Esposito (S) md. Douglas Hesse, 11-3

150: Attila Vigilante (S) d. Matthew McCann, 4-1

157: Noah Fontana (S) p. Andres Herrera Ramos, 1:13

165: Wyatt Stout (S) p. Christopher Castro, 0:48

175: Matthew Di Eduardo (BR) p. Nick Daddona, 5:19

190: Levi Foote (S) p. Lerrod Smalls, 2:20

215: Trent Levash (BR) p. Sean Dupnak, 2:45

Hwt: Caleb Counts (S) p. Gabriel Medina-Coello, 2:19

106: Cade Collins (S) tf. Akeo Diaz, 15-0

Records: Southern (18-3); Bridgewater-Raritan (21-8).