Jackson repeats in District 21 behind balanced effort
By tim morris
Staff Writer

JERRY WOLKOWITZ Jackson’s Jeremy Edwards controls Holmdel’s Chris Terry en route to a District 21 championship at 171 pounds at Manalapan High School on Saturday.

Jackson may feel the hot breath of Manalapan and Howell breathing down its back, but the Jaguar wrestling team isn’t ready to surrender its crown just yet.

In one of its most impressive displays of overall balance at the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association District 21 Wrestling Tournament, Scott Goodale’s Jaguars won their fifth straight championship Saturday at Manalapan High School.

While Manalapan was crowning five individual champions and Howell four, Jackson had 12 of its wrestlers place over the weekend. They rode that depth to 222.5 points, 14.5 points better than runner-up Manalapan (208), while third-place Howell had 181.5.

"Manalapan and Howell are both a heck of a tournament team," said Goodale. "They have some studs in their lineup we couldn’t match up with. To make up for the big points they would get, we had to do our jobs individually. Everyone had to try to do their best.

"We got 12 of our 14 wrestlers through [to Region VI]," he said. "We’re a blue-collar team. We have pretty good kids at every weight, and they work their tails off."

This just may be the sweetest of Jackson’s five consecutive titles, because it wasn’t expected at the start of the season. The Jags were young and expected to be in a rebuilding mode. The team that the Jags brought to Manalapan has only three seniors in the lineup but was still able to win one of the most competitive districts in the state. That’s not a good omen for Manalapan and Howell, two teams that have been steadily closing the gap.

"We’re very young," said Goodale. "We were able to win the brutal A South Division and reach the Shore Conference final. We had big matches all year with Brick Memorial and Absegami, Absecon.

"This (District 21) is a primetime event, and although we’ve been in huge matches before, we didn’t react real well to the pressure on Friday," said Goodale. "But we got through it and wrestled better today. It was all about balance."

Giro Borgia (130), Jeremy Edwards (171) and John Loff (heavyweight) were Jackson’s individual champions. All three are underclassmen, and for Edwards and Loff, it was their second straight title.

Edwards (27-2) pinned his way to the final and then beat Holmdel’s Chris Terry by a major decision, 17-6, in the championship match.

Borgia (21-7) held off Manalapan’s Sean Burns, 6-4, while Loff used a third-period takedown to outduel Marlboro’s Eric Weiner in the heavyweight final, 3-2. He went to 21-5 with the win.

Loff won at 215 last year, while Edwards repeated as 171 champion.

While the Jaguars were keeping their winning streak alive, so were Howell’s Zac Cunliffe and Manalapan’s Mike Gaeta. Each of the two juniors won his third straight District 21 title, and they are well on their way to becoming rare, four-time champions. Neither takes any match lightly. That’s why they have avoided upsets.

Cunliffe, who said he had been in somewhat of a slump late in the season, needed the District 21 tournament and the knowledge that this is the start of the road to Atlantic City and the state championships to recapture his fire. Looking refreshed, Cunliffe was highly impressive throughout the weekend, capturing his third straight title with a technical fall, 20-4, victory over Jackson’s Jay Koonts in the 119 final. Cunliffe, who ran his undefeated record this season to 28-0, was super sharp on his feet, using a number of slick moves to continually take the Jaguar down.

"I’m feeling good right now," the three-time champion said. "I opened up a lot this weekend."

This year’s District 21 tournament is the most satisfying for Cunliffe because his brother Rod, a senior, got to join him as a champion.

After his victory at 119, Zac Cunliffe went to his brother and gave him some advice for his 125-pound final.

"I told him, ‘Don’t lose; this is your year,’" he said.

Rod Cunliffe and St. John Vianney’s Anthony Castro hooked up in the most compelling final of the tournament. Castro took a 27-0 record into the final that included a win-by-decision over Cunliffe during the regular season. Both were hungry for their first District championship. Castro is a sophomore and Cunliffe a senior. That may have been the difference in this battle of wills in which neither wrestler gave an inch. They were scoreless through three hard-fought two-minute periods. Overtime was required to determine the winner.

"In our first match, we rode each other out," Cunliffe said. "All week my coaches were telling me to be patient and let him make the mistake. In overtime, I was trying to frustrate him into a mistake."

It happened 30 seconds into overtime when Cunliffe was able to get a hold of Castro’s hip. In a split second, he had the takedown and the 2-0 win.

In addition to the Cunliffes, Howell’s other winners were Matt Ingrassia (152) and Brian Farrington (189).

Ingrassia, a senior, won his second straight tournament title, pinning Colts Neck’s Matt Parisi in the final in 54 seconds. Ingrassia improved his record to 23-5.

Farrington pinned Manalapan’s Chris Rock at 3:49, taking his first District 21 title. He improved his record to 16-5.

All the District winners, runners-up and third-place finishers advanced to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association Region VI championships at Brick Memorial High School this week.

The runners-up and third-place finishers wrestled yesterday in the preliminaries.

The quarterfinals are Friday, with the semifinals, consolations and finals on Saturday. The top three at the Region tournament will advance to the Super Region, also held at Brick Memorial, on Tuesday.