Locals find out sectional pairings

As expected, five Colonial Valley Conference wrestling teams have qualified for the NJSIAA sectionals, which get underway Monday night at the higher seeds.

Three of those teams are in Central Jersey Group III where No. 3 Hopewell Valley will host No. 6 Lawrence and No. 7 Allentown will travel to defending champion and No. 2 Ocean Township.

All three of those teams also qualified last year. Hopewell won two matches before losing to Ocean, and Lawrence and Allentown which were each eliminated in the first round.

Also returning to sectionals for the second straight year are Hightstown and Notre Dame. No. 6 Hightstown will be at No. 3 Long Branch in C.J. Group IV, while Notre Dame will be at Christian Brothers in South Jersey Parochial A.

Only two teams from the entire area received top seeds. They are North Hunterdon, which is the top- ranked public school team in the state, in North 2 Group IV and defending sectional champion Delaware Valley in North 2 Group 1.

Burlington County has nine teams in the field along with Ocean County’s New Egypt. The highest seed for the Burlington teams went to No. 4 North- ern Burlington, which is in the very tough C.J. Group IV field along with Hightstown and will open at home against Colts Neck. Should it win, NBC would then head to top-seeded Brick Memorial.

The sectionals will take place next week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The sectional winners will then advance to groups a week from Sunday