Manchio, Fernandes get nod in Atlantic City
Before taking a look at the New Jersey Coaches Poll and the picks for the winners at states, readers are advised how The Trentonian will wrap up its coverage of the high school wrestling season.
In addition to reports from Atlantic City over the weekend, Tuesday’s paper will include the annual Slammy awards as well as The Trentonian’s All-Area team consisting of wrestlers from over 50 schools in the Delaware Valley. Furthermore, the All-Colonial Valley Conference team will also appear next week.
With that out of the way, it should come as no surprise that as predicted Paulsboro managed to lobby its way past Howell in the Coaches Poll. Although you’d have to be in the room to know for sure, the word is it was a 4-4 split among the region ranking chairmen with somebody from Paulsboro casting the deciding and tiebreaking vote in Cough City’s favor.
This is a very old and familiar story and brings back memories of the time Paulsboro received the No. 1 trophy in Princeton’s Jadwin Gym and was roundly booed by the crowd because everyone knew the vote had been rigged in its favor.
Now, we know what you are thinking. What difference does it make how they are ranked because the top two teams in the poll are non-public schools anyway. This is true enough, but since nobody cares about the parochials the real battle was for the No. 1 public school spot in the state.
There’s no need here to go into why Howell would be favored in a dual match, but it is amusing to note how Howell won eight weights to the Red Raiders’ four in a seasonopening tourney in Paulsboro.
As is Paulsboro’s way, it came up with lame excuses for its second-place showing on its home mat in “The Dungeon,” including its upperweights were just coming off the football season. Nice try, but two of Howell’s upperweights were members of a football team that was in the playoffs as well.
The fact Howell got whacked by Lenape, 63-28, speaks volumes about the overrated nature of Shore Conference football, but that’s another story for another time.
Truth be told, neither Howell nor Paulsboro wrestled much of a regular season dual match schedule. Howell’s top win was over the No. 5 ranked team in the poll, Hunterdon Central, while Paulsboro’s was against No. 9 Emerson. And both of those matches didn’t occur until groups.
Emerson, by the way, really got screwed in the poll because it beat Hunterdon Central.
Anyway, if it’s that important to Red Raider backers to be ranked ahead of Howell, let them enjoy it. Just because you have juice on how the vote went down doesn’t mean people are buying it and anyone who has ever had the misfortune of driving through boarded-up Paulsboro can’t help but feel at least some pity for the people who actually live there.