Long Valley Wrestlers Fall One Match Short of League Finals Rematch with South Plainfield

The Wolfpack's competition weekend started of promising as Long Valley's Future Stars team kicked off a big weekend of competition on Friday night, defeating Wharton 48-36 in the last wrestling match of the season at Long Valley Middle School.

Saturday morning, 5 Wolfpack wrestlers competed in the King of the Mat JV tournament in Hanover Township, and 4 of them placed 1st.  Malachi Shepard, Billy Apostolico, Ian Carpenter, and Michael Caso each won all of their matches, while Sam Rizzuto dropped his final match to place 2nd.

Saturday night, Long Valley's 5th-8th grade team traveled to Warren Hills High School hoping to win its first League championship, and the evening started off on the right foot with a convincing victory over High Point.  In the semi-finals, the Wolfpack battled Watchung Hills to the last match, losing a heart-breaker, 38-35.  Gathering themselves after a very disappointing loss, the Wolfpack finished their dual meet season by beating Washington Y easily to place 3rd in one of the best Leagues in New Jersey.  The team championship was ultimately won by South Plainfield, the team Long Valley beat just 2 weeks ago.  The Grade School team finishes its dual meet season with a record of 17-3, and will wrap up its season next Sunday at the individual championship tournament where Long Valley will look to crown some champions and challenge for the tournament team title.

Sunday, Long Valley sent 9 wrestlers to Del Val High School to compete in the Grade School League JV tournament, and produced 3 champions (Dan Kern, Luke Stefanelli, and Jacob Rutter), and two runners-up, Eli Shepard and Ian Carpenter.  John DeVito added a 3rd place medal to round out an impressive performance by the Wolfpack.

Also on Sunday, the Northwest team lost its third match of the season to Sussex, finishing the regular season at 10-3 and setting itself up as the 3rd seed in the year-end Team playoffs Saturday at Wallkill Valley where they'll pursue their 4th League title in a row.

Finally on Sunday, 30 of Long Valley's youngest wrestlers competed in their year-end tournament in Morristown, the results of which we'll publish here in a future blog.