Lawrence’s Lynne tops 300-win milestone
LAWRENCE >> Although there have been lots of ups and downs along the way, there has been one constant with the Lawrence High wrestling team for over the last three decades.
If you give Chris Lynne some quality wrestlers, he will crank out the wins.
As a result Lynne became just the second coach in Mercer County history to reach the 300-win mark Saturday when his team swept at quad on its home mat by beating Metuchen, 48-30, Notre Dame, 49-30, and New Egypt, 40-36.
Lynne’s career victory total in 32 years is actually now at 302 after his team finished a break-out dual match season with a final record of 237. Prior to this year, no Lawrence team had won more than 15 matches in a season.
“It was a long time coming,” said Lynne with a smile when asked about reaching the 300 milestone. “I still feel good; I can still work out with the kids. I’ll keep on coaching as long as my wife lets me do it.”
At the age of 54, Lynne could become the county’s all-time winningest coach, but when that would happen is unclear. Gary Dambro coached at Notre Dame for over 40 years and surely has over 300 wins, but he has repeatedly declined to answer when asked for his final career coaching record.
Whatever happens from here, it is good to see Lawrence back on the winning path with a lineup full of sophomores.
“It’s all about your feeder,” said Lynne, who took over the Lawrence coaching reigns from Jimmy Mansfield at the age of 21 after graduating from what at the time was called Trenton State College. “In the early years, we had no middle school program; it was just a matter of who showed up. Then we got a strong middle school program and had a nice run starting in the late 90. We struggled again after that, but our middle school is once again strong again and you can see the result.”
Lynne, of course, coached Mercer County’s first state champion when Mark Savino brought home the gold from Atlantic City in 2004. Mark and his older brother Mike were both two-time placewinners at states. During the 2004-2005 seasons, Lawrence also sent 11 different wrestlers to states out of the very tough District 17 and Region V tournaments.
As for his most memora- ble dual match win, Lynne didn’t hesitate when asked to identify which one stood out the most.
“Beating North Hunterdon (in 2004),” he replied.
In addition to numerous league titles, Lynne also coached Lawrence to backto-back Mercer County Tour- nament titles during the hey- day of Cardinal wrestling in the early 2000s.
As for Saturday’s quad, Lawrence won three wins from Darren Ikeda (113), Miraj Patel (126), Careem Frost (145), Sean Mills (160), Jake Dallarda (170) and Connor Verga (182).
A New Egypt team that really came on this year to finish 18-11, barely lost its last match to Lawrence, but did beat Metuchen, 43-27, and Notre Dame, 38-28. Lightweight AJ Beck led the Warriors with three wins and heavyweight Sebastian Clara got his hand raised three times as well.