HHS Wrestling
Come out tomorrow and cheer on our high school wrestling team in the sectional quarter finals at home!! 7:00 start time!! Wrestle hard boys!!!
Benn4 Coach Rodgers has the unenviable (but interesting) task of coaching against his son tonight.
http://highschoolsports.lehighvalleylive.com/news/article/-6539354586658555005/nj-wrestling-2015-hackettstown-head-coach-frank-rodgers-to-face-familiar-foe-in-first-round-north-2-group-2-tilt-with-caldwell/
CR37 As a kid, I wrestled in 7th and 8th grade. It was tough. I wish I had stuck with it through high school. The guys I knew who wrestled all 4 years of high school all had incredible work ethics after high school. If you can get through a wrestling practice the work force is a breeze. Good luck men!
ConsigliereIn the fall of 1999, the HHS boys soccer team played West Morris in the sectional championship, and one of the WMC coaches was George Magliaro who also had the unenviable task of coaching against his son Peter who was on the HHS team. I can't even imagine being in that position-you can't win either way!
Lorinda Ravo Great win tonight over Calwell! Congrats to our boys!! Onto the semifinals against Hanover Park tomorrow!
Coach Rogers has had sons in the Caldwell program for I think the last 6-7 years. We always wrestle them tough. My son wrestled for HHS, Coach was also his Calculus teacher. The wrestling taught him to fight hard, the calculus helped him get a Magna Cumme Laude in Electrical Engineering.
Needless to say I wish the team and the Coach well.
Agust Congratulations to Coach Rogers and the Tiger wrestling team, they kicked butt tonight! Tough match tomorrow at number 1 seed hanover park.
Good luck Tigers against a very good Hanover Park team.
I was at that 1999 H-town W-Morris game, that was a great Hackettstown boys soccer team. In fact, Lorinda wrote several well-written articles for the Star-Gazette in those days. I appreciated her work, since it is hard to be in five places at once when you're trying to cover the whole county.
A couple of years later, Jeff Coates was the defensive coordinator for football at Hunterdon Central and his son Jim played quarterback for Warren Hills. Coates had to game-plan for, and dial up blitzes, against his own son.
Father against son and brother against brother stuff happens a lot in sports ... if you want to teach and coach, you have to take the jobs wherever they are offered.
I had to play against my high school teammate and best friend in a college basketball game, maybe not the same thing, but very close. During the game, when I got the ball, he's calling to his teammates, "he can't go left, he can't go left." Some friend LOL
Andy Loigu 
LoBo 
droptine A "spankin?"
It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
mom of one Hanover High does have a good feeder program,that does make a difference! Well better luck next year!
Hope they get some regional and state qualifiers, would be nice to see.
The season isn't over yet.
West Morris got to a section final.
Their "reward" is a trip to the infamous Phillipsburg Pit.
WMC has already been there once this year, managing to win only two bouts en route to a 53-7 loss on January 2nd. I think they may be able to raise that number to three or four this time around, but it still won't be close.
ianimal We are all so proud of our wrestlers. Making it to the sectionals is a huge accomplishment! These boys are well rounded athletes that play 2-3 sports while most of the Hanover kids wrestle year long with clubs. Our boys are shaking off the loss and looking forward to districts!!
Andy, your game against your best friend reminds me of the scene in "A League of Their Own": Dottie says to the pitcher (about her sister) "High fastballs. She can't hit them, can't lay off them."
That was a great movie, based on real life events (loosely perhaps, but that's movies for you). Tom Hanks played Jimmy Foxx, a Hall of Famer who hailed from Easton, Maryland. I've visited the museum that honors their hometown hero in that Chesapeake Bay town.
Why couldn't they use the real name? I've always wondered about that.
When you compete against someone who really knows you, they know your flaws.
I've also visited the Cal Ripken museum in Aberdeen, Maryland. Funny thing there, we all know that Cal broke that hallowed record for consecutive games. His brother, Billy, who played both with Cal and against him (he was traded a few times) went on the disabled list 12 times. He gets a lot of mileage out of that in some commercials he does in the Baltimore media.
Billy told a funny story once, said Cal could hardly walk and went to the trainer, who gave him pain killers so he could play.
Billy then asked the trainer if he could clip his hang-nail, and he said, we'll have to put you on the disabled list.
Just a funny story, but there was probably an element of truth in there, as there is with most humor.
Yeah, I know, Andy. I was following along; it was a rhetorical question (-;
And I was right... WMC won three bouts this time, but still got beat 55-12. They also forfeited three bouts, any idea why?
I've seen lots of forfeits in sectional matches when a team has no shot at winning ... coaches want to "save" kids for the districts and regionals ... and a loss for the kid may hurt his seeding.
Schuitema and Nothnagel, two of the Pburg guys who won forfeits, are state ranked and West Morris (looking over their recent summaries) has been forfeiting two upper weights in every match lately, even in their wins.
Kevin Sears of West Morris (went into OT tonight) is a really good football player.
In one game he scored three different ways, a kickoff return of 85 yards, an interception return, and a running play.
I'm pretty sure each high school gets to send one wrestler at each weight class to Districts. It's just a matter of how long they stay there..
The starting lineup all goes to districts ... then "only the strong (and smart and agile) survive" and advance.
Hackettstown has sent kids to AC in recent years and Alex Carida (with Paetzel out for the season at 113) has a window of opportunity here ... Carida has 21 wins and could make a lot of noise. I like Steve Nicotra at 120 and Joe Renne at 126, Nick Renne at 182, to make a run for the glory, too. Also, Anthony Carida (23 wins) is someone to watch at 160, he's a little bit on the cautious and defensive side, but it works for him.
The beauty of it is, everybody has a shot next weekend to catch lightning in a bottle.
OK, that's enough clichés for one post (-;
Andy, you forgot Teddy Gurnowski...He will most likely be in at 220, and has a good chance to get through the districts and advance. I think his only losses were at heavyweight, but he was giving away alot of weight.
One more thing, you only need to finish third or higher in a field of eight to advance to regionals in your weight class, so you can lose to the Pburg guy and still keep going.
You want to avoid getting into the losers' bracket though, because then you go into wrestlebacks and it is much harder to advance.
Staying in the winners' bracket keeps you in the Express Lane.
If Gurnowski weighs in at 220, that's where he should stay, because that District 1 heavyweight division, with Nothnagel and Pacheco both state ranked, looks brutal.
Districts will be on Saturday at Mt Olive. All the boys in the line up have a great chance of making it through. Boys will bounce around into the best weight for themselves. It doesn't matter where they wrestled for the season but where they are certified for in the beginning of the season. You may have a 160 pounder bounce down to 152 or bounce up to 170. Coach Rodgers and Coach Berringer know best and the kids and parents trust in them with no reservations! The boys will be digging deep and practicing hard this week! Should be an exciting day!
P'burg marches on to the state final, 59-6 over Roxbury IN A STATE SEMI-FINAL.
Four pins and a tech fall. Mercy!
I'm pretty sure you have to have wrestled at least one bout at a specific weight class in order to wrestle at that weight in the individual tournaments.
I think the rule is, you can't enter a weight class below the lowest you wrestled in during the season ... they don't want kids cutting weight just to get into a certain weight class.
P'burg is the state champs, 38-12 over Jackson Memorial.
Kyle Markus had two pins today. Good for him. CLUTCH
When I used to cover sports down there, they only had one Jackson and one Brick.
Now, both townships have two high schools -- adding Jackson Memorial and Brick Memorial.
imo -
i think joe renne is Hackettstown's best chance for a trip to a/c this year. he should certainly make it to wallkill, probably winning districts.
I think alex carida will have a battle in the district, with 4 good, known wrestlers.
his brother, Anthony carida, will also have a battle in the district, with 6 good, known wrestlers.
and I agree with deviljet, teddy gurnowski will have a battle in the district, with 4 good, known wrestlers.
good luck to all wrestlers!
Even though the curve by which they determine who gets into which group, put P'burg in Group 4, they really should have been wrestling the Group 5 schools ... they should not have created five groups .... ridiculous.
Instead, they could have taken just one day ... have four group winners wrestle each other, and have a true public schools state champion.
Makes too much sense for adults to ever make it happen.
P'burg was just head and shoulders, men against boys, over the Group 4 competitors the way it all played out.
At least wrestling decides a champion at the Group level among all schools of similar enrollment, unlike football... How many Sectional "champions" did they crown last year, 24? That's ridiculous.
I have no problem with the overall setup for wrestling. A small school is hamstrung at the team level, due to a much smaller talent pool (with obvious exceptions such as Paulsboro and Bound Brook) but individuals from small schools are on equal footing for this part of the season and get to achieve individual glory against the best of the best. I think PA has different individual tournaments for different sized schools. THAT, I strongly disagree with.
Wait till the groups change,Tigers will be wrestling all top guns,it is a big step from group 2 to group 3! So many schools today know they need to change there programs!What happens when you bring up Pburg wrestling,the first sentence is , they are tough,great skill, always winners! They call it the pit up there,what are they doing,that other schools are not doing?This applies to football etc.,towns are changing things,kids want to win,they want programs, clinics,or they will go out of the public school system.We lose a lot of kids in our programs.
Yes, New Jersey gets it right with this part of the season, and I don't even have a problem with the Delbartons and Camden Catholics being involved --- you want to be state champion, beat the best.
When a kid from Hackettstown won a state title wrestling for Delbarton, I made sure the readers knew he wrestled for the Tigers' youth program.
Hackettstown has "lost" some great kids to Blair over the years, too.
They've lost good football players to Pope John --- it happens.
Pride and tradition, I was part of a high school program in Southern Jersey that had it for basketball, Pburg has it for football and wrestling and sports in general. Pride and tradition makes kids really want to live up to their school's reputation and makes them "play better than they really are" ... if that makes sense to you.
Ned Bolcar once said, jokingly but also seriously, "We're good at sports at P'burg because we don't have anything else."
Seriously, Pburg cares about sports more than anybody else and there are generational roots deeply in place, grandpa played here, dad played here, big brother played here, now it's my time. That's basically it.
Here are the District 1 pairings for Saturday at Mount Olive:
http://highschoolsports.lehighvalleylive.com/news/article/-5371732703190699624/nj-wrestling-2015-complete-district-1-pairings/#incart_river
A real good district this year ... the Morris schools have some real top notch guys in the mix this year.
Phillipsburg, by having their wrestlers face nationally ranked guys in early season tournaments and scheduling top ranked teams for dual meets, always has an edge, though. They are battle tested, and then some.
How do these kids get into the Mt Olive Tournament with losing records,is it base on power points?Is it based on wrestling out of group?
Lobo, do you mean the district's at My Olive this wkend? Districts are held all across the State. All varsity wrestlers participate. Wrestler has to place in the top 3 ,in order to move on to the Regions the following wk
Which for hackettstown is held at region 1 in wallkill valley.
vicnity Every school is allowed to send one wrestler at each weight class to Districts. Their record doesn't matter except for seeding purposes. The top three finishers at each weight class move on to the Regions at Walkill Valley. There are four districts per region which results in 12 wrestlers per weight class. Each District champ receives a bye in the first round, so it's a 4-round 16-wrestler championship bracket that is double elimination with wrestlebacks all the way to third place. Top three in each Region move on to States.
My advice to all the wrestlers, stay away from those wrestlebacks. If at all possible, stay in the Express Lane.
andy, you are certainly right ... I'm sure you remember writing about owen Vernon's odyssey in atlantic city in 2008 ... needed more wins to place third than the winner did!
into the district semi's - justin bennet (106), alex carida (113), joe renne (126) & kyle connelly (170).
1 more win in next 2 matches and they're on to regions
Joe Renne takes 2nd and Alex Carida takes 3rd going into the Region. Bennett and Connelly take 4th.
Congrats to Mr Rodgers wrestlers, they battled all day long today. Joe Renne lost a heartbreaker 8-7 in the champ match but still qualified for next week, as did Alex Carida, who won his third place match.
Its just tough to wrestle in a district final with top teams Phillipsburg and West Morris who qualified 22 wrestlers forthe regionals between the two schools!
Big sports fan Congrats to everybody posting here for keeping it all so supportive and positive.
Yes, I do remember Owen Vernon's Odyssey in Atlantic City ... a good nickname for him, after all that, would be 'Rocky.'
Dave Post (now the Pburg head coach) went through a similar ordeal when he was a high school wrestler for the Stateliners. That's what you call being tough.
Sending good thoughts to our wrestlers headed to the Regions tomorrow!! Good luck Joey and Alex!!
Joe Renne advancing to finals!! Guaranteed spot for States by beating the number 1 seed!!! We are so proud of him!!!
Congratulations to Joe Renne! Region 1 champion at 120 lbs. On to Atlantic City. He won the finals by beating the wrestler that beat him in the district finals. Awesome job and determination.
Winning a title as a fifth seed is awesome. Great Whatever It Takes job. Good luck in AC.
Only one is in AC and he pinned his guy in overtime last night! Wrestles again in a few hours!
bac Joe lost 7-0 this afternoon to the top wrestler in his weight class, now its on to the wrestlebacks for his chance to get a medal. Only the top eight finishers get awards.
Unfortunately Joe lost in the wrestlebacks and will not get a medal. JOE had a fantastic season though finishing with an overall record of 35-8 and hoping for more sucess next season!
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