Hopewell Valley flexes muscles against up-and-coming Lawrence

HOPEWELL TWP. >> With nine victories already in the books and 16 dual matches still to go, it promises to be a historical season for the Lawrence High wrestling team in its bid to break the school record of 15 wins in a year.

Although good things are clearly happening at Lawrence with a very young squad, the fact it also still has a very long way to go was put on full display Thursday night in a 60-15 loss to Hopewell Valley.

Truth be told Lawrence was not at full strength with four starters out of its lineup. But it’s also equally true their presence would almost certainly have not make much of a difference in terms of the team score because the majority of them would have been underdogs had they gone on the mat.

With the loss Lawrence dropped to 9-4. Hopewell Valley, meanwhile, improved to 8-5 as it continued to make utter mincemeat out of the Colonial Valley Conference. Hopewell has now won 33 in a row and 87 out of its last 88 CVC matches. In its six CVC matches to date, Hopewell has won every one of them by at least 30 points.

With bout-limit problems looming on the horizon, Lynne more or less admitted he held a few wrestlers out against Hopewell because the chances of beating the Bulldog were slim to none to begin with.

“We had to sit some guys at some point, but that’s no excuse for the guys we did send out there to wrestle sloppily,’’ said veteran Lawrence coach Chris Lynne, who currently has 288 career victories. “We’re getting there, but we are still having growing pains.’’

Lawrence did get off to a nice start against Hopewell Valley when Jake Dellarda (160) and Connor Verga (170) opened the match with decisions, but it was pretty much all downhill from there. The only other Cardinal points came on a forfeit at heavyweight and Reece Schenk’s 4-3 win at 132.

Ironically, Schenk’s win also produced arguably the best showing of the night for Hopewell Valley. Schenk was a region qualifier last season, but he got all he could handle against Alejandro Lopez and needed a takedown a second before the third-period buzzer to rally for a 4-3 win.

“And he’s only a freshman,’’ said Hopewell Valley coach Mario Harpel of Lopez. “He hasn’t been in our lineup much, but he’s a really good kid.’’

Not much of note happened in the rest of the match with many of the bouts resulting in easy Hopewell Valley pins.

One fall came from standout Chris Lanciano, who returned from a two-week layoff because of injury to deck his opponent in 23 seconds with a headlock. Lanciano’s pin came after Joey Vannozzi had cradled up his opponent in :46 in the previous 120-pound bout.

Also recording pins in the first period were Brandon Bowman (182), Brian LaCross (195), Aaron Longo (138) and Justin Venezia (152).

Hopewell Valley (8-5) 60, Lawrence (9-4) 15

160: Jake Dallarda (LASE) over Sean Santora (HVH) (Dec 5-3) 170: Connor Verga (LASE) over Josh Beigman (HVH) (Dec 4-0) 182: Brandon Bowman (HVH) over Ricardo Cruz (LASE) (Fall 0:39) 195: Brian LaCross (HVH) over Carlos Gonzalez (LASE) (Fall 1:21) 220: Christian Cacciabaudo (HVH) over Karry Villalobos (LASE) (Fall 3:22) 285: Moaamen Nasr (LASE) over (HVH) (For.); 106: Christian Micikas (HVH) over Cory Stallworth (LASE) (Fall 2:54) 113: Jacob Venezia (HVH) over (LASE) (For.) 120: Joey Vannozzi (HVH) over Isaiah Hancock (LASE) (Fall 0:46) 126: Chris Lanciano (HVH) over Nasir Denson (LASE) (Fall 0:23) 132: Reece Schenck (LASE) over Alejandro Lopez (HVH) (Dec 4-3) 138: Aaron Longo (HVH) over Brett Gallagher (LASE) (Fall 1:17) 145: Heath Trainor (HVH) over Owen Drake (LASE) (Fall 4:50) 152: Justin Venezia (HVH) over Sean Mills (LASE) (Fall 1:24)