Lawrence sweeps quad meet at Burlington Twp.

BURLINGTON TWP. >> You can just see the Lawrence High School wrestling team developing a real taste for winning.

Competing in a quad meet at Burlington Township on Saturday, it all started with a solid 48-28 victory over Steinert. From there, Lawrence also beat Toms River South, 48-20, and host Township, 54-24.

Following a long stretch of losing years including a 10-16 showing just last season, Lawrence is now 12-4. And with 13 duals still to go, you go to the bank the Cardinals are going to smash the school record of 15 wins in a season.

On a day in which coach Chris Lynne also upped his career victory total to 291, Lawrence got contributions from up and down its lineup.

Obviously, the match it cared about most was against Steinert. Considering Lynne saw this match as having four or five tossups before it got started, the final margin of victory by 20 points speaks for itself.

“Every break in this match went our way,” said Lynne. “Two of our middleweights got us going. I figured they would come back in the upperweights and they did what they had to do. But we then got key wins in 120 and 126. It was a real team effort.”

The two who got Lawrence going were Sean Mills (152) and Jake Dallarda (160) in the first two bouts of the match. Mills won by decision and Dallarda then pinned Dante Hawkins after the Steinert wrestler had caught him with a five-point move in the first period. Dallarda was leading this wild bout, 11-9, when he threw Hawkins to his back with a lateral drop.

Steinert’s strength is in the upperweights and after Lawrence got a quick fall by Connor Verga at 170 to increase its lead to 15-0, the Spartans pinned from 182 through heavyweight to take a 24-15 lead.

With some of Lawrence’s top wrestlers waiting at the end in the middleweights, Steinert had to dominate down below to have any chance. It didn’t happen as Lawrence won three out of four from 106 through 126 to set itself up for an easy victory.

First, aggressive 106-pounder Cory Stallworth stopped the Steinert momentum with a third-period period fall. Lawrence’s Isaiah Hancock then pinned in the first period at 120 and Miraj Patel looked good in an 8-3 victory over Anthony Verdi at 126 pounds.

This set the stage for Lawrence to blow it wide open on first-period pins by Brett Gallagher (132) and Jaiveer Singh as well as a forfeit to Careem Frost at 145.

Triple winners on the day for Lawrence included Verga, Hancock, Reece Schenk.

Although Steinert lost to Lawrence in its first match of the day, it did rebound to beat Burlington Township, 48-24,and Toms River South, 42-31. Heavyweight Thomas Wasylenko got his hand raised three times for the Spartans.