Little Tigers grow even in loss to WW-P North
By: Bob Nuse
Experience goes a long way in high school wrestling.
This year, West Windsor-Plainsboro North has it, and as a result the Knights are off to their best start in years. On Saturday, WW-P North topped Princeton, 51-24, for its third straight win to improve to 3-3 on the season.
For Princeton, the loss dropped it to 1-2 on the season, with head coach RaShone Johnson hoping as his team gains more experience, it will be able to turn around and win matches like the one it lost on Saturday.
"We have got a long way to go," Johnson said after the loss. "But I have no doubt we’ll get there. We need to get that experience."
One Princeton wrestler with that experience already is junior Mark Jeevaratnam, who was one of the Little Tigers’ five winners on Saturday. Jeevaratnam is in his third year with the varsity, going 4-10 as a freshman and then 1-16 a year ago. He’s off to a good start this year winning each of his first three dual matches, including an impressive 13-3 win over Ramon Sanchez on Saturday.
"I’ve been pretty happy with how I have been doing so far this year," said Jeevaratnam, who has moved up in weight class each year. "I cut a lot of weight last year to wrestle at 130. This year I’m at 145 and I haven’t had to cut weight, which has helped me."
More than anything else, Jeevaratnam credits an improved mental approach to his success so far this season.
"I did a lot of work on the mental part of wrestling," he said. "I’m more focused for the matches and I’m able to see what I should do even before I do it. I’ve learned to focus and keep my mind on one goal and do the right things in order to win a match.
"Every day I work on the mental part of the matches and making sure I get the image in my mind of what I am supposed to do. I think that as helped me."
Johnson also can see a difference in the way Jeevaratnam is wrestling this year.
"Mark has come a long way," the Princeton coach said. "I thought he was good last year. But it was a matter of him believing in himself now. That’s made a big difference for him.
"When he gets into a position to shoot now, he knows he is going to be able to do it. Last year when he was in the same position, he would try the move and hope he could do it. Now he knows he can do it."
Jeevaratnam also knows it is just a matter of time before the Little Tigers turn it around this year as well.
"We have a lot of inexperience and those guys in the lineup are only going to get better," Jeevaratnam said. "We’re all coming along. We know we need to work a little harder and get some experience and I think we can be a good team."
WW-P North coach Bill Mealy was saying those same sort of things last year. And even after his team opened the season with three losses in a quad meet against Livingston, St. John Vianney and South Brunswick, the Knights’ coach was confident they would get better.
"When we lost those first three, you could see the kids not backing down against the good competition," Mealy said. "I was happy with the way we competed and the kids did not get discouraged."
And that has led to three straight wins. This one against Princeton came easier than anyone expected.
"A couple of the big guys came through for us," Mealy said. "Tyler (Vandervort) and Fady (Abdelhady) were a little ugly out there on the mat, but they came through and won matches that we didn’t know if they’d be able to win. Those were key wins for us in the match."
The Knights picked up pins from Ted Hirt, Jeff Rotella, Corey Simmons-Elder, Tim McGuigan, Alex Ragucci, Vandervort and Abdelhady. Other winners were Joel Kaye and George Goldsmith.
In addition to the win from Jeevaratnam, Princeton picked up points from Woo Sun, Eric Cooper, Tom Frantzen and Will Borchert.

