Manville wrestling off to another hot start despite losing seven starters
NEW BRUNSWICK – Perhaps nobody explained to the Manville wrestling team what a rebuilding year is supposed to look like.
You know, there’s a bunch of defeats with newcomers taking their lumps. Especially for a Group 1 school, throw in a lineup littered with forfeits in unfilled weight classes.
Well, after losing seven starters, the Mustangs are off to a 5-0 start and have a tournament win. As Manville coach Pat Gorbatuk puts it, “we’re a team of unknowns. We’re OK with that.”
Senior Brandon Flores added, “We don’t care how small we are. We want to wrestle everyone and anyone.”
Hey, what rebuilding year?
“We certainly take pride in filling the lineup,” Gorbatuk said. “It’s something we talk about. We don’t want to say we’re good for a small school. We want to say we’re good period. We do try to challenge ourselves with our schedule as best as we can based on what we have each year.”
Gorbatuk notes there’s still a lot of work to do, but Manville continued its hot start with three wins in Saturday’s quad meet at New Brunswick Middle School. Notably, they defeated Group 4 Montgomery 39-24, in which has become sort of a friendly rivalry the first month of the season.
In the opening weekend, 12-team Mike Dessino Invitational, Manville captured first place (182 points) with Montgomery taking second (156.5 points). In last weekend’s Somerset County Tournament, Montgomery finished in 10th place ahead of Manville by seven points.
Of course, dual meets are different and Manville won the head to head meeting by taking eight of the 14 matches, including two forfeits.
“Without a doubt, they’re putting some serious work in,” Gorbatuk said of Montgomery. “They’re being coached up. Their kids are excited about the sport. They’re definitely a formidable opponent and I’m extremely pleased with the way our kids competed. We’re so inexperienced in a lot of places.”
What made the win so much better, was that Manville took a handful of expected toss up matches. Gorbatuk admitted they didn’t expect to win at 106, but sophomore first-year starter Justin Petti set the tone with an 8-7 victory.
At 138, senior Michael Sommers recently returned after missing a few weeks and won 11-4.
Also earning decisions were senior David Peterson (150), sophomore Lucas Velando (165) and senior Jacob Reilly (190). While freshman Trip Freitag (157) and Flores (144) scored falls. Nick Lombardino (113) and Marvin Valverde-Bonilla (215) had the two forfeit wins.
“We just keep going and going and going,” Gorbatuk said. “I think on most days it’s tough to expect that you’re going to get that many positive results from so many young kids or so many kids that just don’t have their motor going yet -- but it just seemed like everything clicked. Even the matches that we were underdogs in, we probably outperformed our expectations.”
Manville also defeated New Brunswick 67-12 and Highland Park 70-6. Other wrestlers earning wins on the day other than by forfeit were Anthony Drake (120), Brandon Rivera (126), Geoffrey Mathis (215) and Valverde-Bonilla at heavyweight.
In the 14-team Central Group 1 section, Manville has the fourth-lowest school enrollment, according to the NJSIAA. While that means nothing come the hand shake, it does provide those other schools with a bigger pool to pluck athletes.
Gorbatuk notes it’s often hard to throw a lineup out loaded with upperclassmen, but they compensate with their offseason work and several multi-sport athletes, re: “kids who are willing to compete and be coached.”
Perhaps the poster for that is Flores, who Gorbatuk calls “one of the finest human beings ever.” Last season, Flores went 11-3 and Gorbatuk said that he likely would have qualified for the region tournament, in which wrestlers received berths based on a number of factors.
Flores opted to decline and wrestle the final handful of matches with Manville to be with his team.
“He gets upset if things aren’t being done right,” Gorbatuk said. “Like he genuinely wants to see things done right. He wants to see people do well. He wants to see people happy and he’s just not content with seeing things being in disarray or seeing people be unsuccessful. He’s kind of like a coach at this point.”
And a pretty good wrestler. Flores captured the 138-point SCT title with a pin in the quarterfinals, a 9-5 win in the semifinals and a 10-4 victory in the championship bout.
Flores, who was a running back/defensive back/kicker in the fall for Manville, has been working toward being a leader since his freshman season.
“It’s when no one’s looking,” the senior said. “You love your guys, you’re going to work hard with them and just do the right things and it will pay off at some point.”
And yeah, maybe Manville will be rebuilding some years, but they’re going to show up.
“Always,” Flores said. "We’re going to work hard. We’re going to get in your face no matter what. No matter who’s on the mat, whoever we send out there is going to go wrestle for six minutes. They’re going to get in your face. They’re going hand fight. They’re going to wrestle well and that’s just this program’s expectation.
“… Rebuilding year or not, winning our conference title is always going to be an expectation at Manville. I want to keep it that way. Not even a hope or a want, I want it to be an expectation here in this program. It means a lot to us.”
Email: amendlowitz@njpressmedia.com
Andy Mendlowitz is a sports reporter for MyCentralJersey.com. To get unlimited access to local news throughout Central Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Manville wrestling off to another hot start with seven new starters
