Mayor Honors Cranford Wrestlers

Mayor Daniel Aschenbach at Tuesday's township committee meeting honored the youth wrestling team in town under the Cranford Police Athletic League for their outstanding season under Coach Kevin Murray. Aschenbach handed five wrestlers certificates up on the podium as the audience whipped up a round of applause.

Cranford’s stats are impressive. They have a combined 70-3 dual meet record for the past four seasons and 99-8 in the past six seasons The team also grabbed champion status four times at the Union County Elementary, a tournament featuring Union County wrestlers from second grade through eighth grade. 

 Around since the 1970s, Cranford wrestling saw its biggest expansion in the past four years. In that time Cranford wrestling has doubled its size, going from 55 wrestlers to 120. 

 Since taking over the program, in 2006, coach Kevin Murray and his staff have emphasized challenging but fun practices.

“We made a serious effort to make the practices more fun for the novice wrestlers and more challenging for the experienced wrestlers,” Murray said. 

 And this season, the program has attracted even more wrestlers, achieving its highest membership to date, 120 wrestlers. 

“Success of the program is all about the number of kids that return the next season and the new kids that sign up,” he said.

  This season was another successful season for the program. The Cranford CJMWL "A" team went 15-1 in dual meet action only losing to state power house South Plainfield.  For the first time since 1981 the Cranford "A" team won the CWMWL end of the season tournament.  Cranford beat out South Plainfield and Bridgewater to win the Championship. The Central Jersey Midget Wrestling Tournament is one of the most competitive tournaments in the state.

 With the growth of the program Cranford had to put a second team in the CJMWL league. The Cranford "B" team end up going 10-0 in "B" league dual matches and winning the "B" league dual meet title

  The place winners for Cranford at the CJMWL "A" tournament are:

50 Luke Digiovanni 5th Place

53 Robert Howard 1st Place

57 Dean Smith(B team) 3rd Place

60 Chris Wozniak 2nd Place

63 Connor Halpin 3rd Place

63 Evan Kanterman(B team) 6th 

67 Thomas Digiovanni 3rd Place

70 Anthony Capece 1st Place

73 Chris Scorese 3rd Place

77 Mike Nigro 1st Place

80 Brian McGovern 2nd Place

83 James Wozniak 2nd  Place

HWT3 Anthony Conte(B team) 1st Place

HWT4 Dylan Budnik 2nd Place