North, South wrestlers place
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Though there were no wrestling champions and just one finalist, Princeton High School’s Corey Marsh, the area’s trio of coaches were encouraged by some results at Saturday’s Mercer County Tournament.
Led by Marsh’s second-place finish at 135 pounds, an injury depleted PHS squad finished 10th with 92½ points. Hopewell Valley won the MCT with 182 points.
Marsh reached the finals by avenging a loss to Ewing’s Marc Schumm in the semifinals. Marsh lost, 6-5, to Trenton’s Raamiah Bethea in the final. Bethea had scored a late win in their first meeting of the year.
”It was a good match,” said PHS coach Rashone Johnson. “The first time Corey was wrestling him, he was winning, 5-1, and he just stopped wrestling at the end of the second and it was 5-3. Then the match was tied up at 6-6 and with two seconds left the kid scores off Corey’s shot.
”The kid was tough. He took Corey down with some nice shots and got ahead. Corey had a solid tournament.”
Damien Freeman was a 3-2 winner for third place at 125 pounds, Louis Marchetta was fourth at 145 pounds after a tight 2-0 loss and Calvin Brasor (171) and Steven Perna (heavyweight) were each sixth.
”It’s not bad. The guys realize that we still could have done better,” Johnson said. “I think the attitude has gotten better from today’s performance. I think they learned some stuff that’s going to make us better for the future. The question is can we be healthy?”
A case and point — Perna scored 20 points in a technical fall, but then couldn’t stop a nosebleed that forced him to injury default his final two matches and fall to sixth. Anastacio Perez couldn’t even enter the MCT due to injury.
West Windsor-Plainsboro South finished 13th with 62½ points though they were missing three wrestlers from their normal lineup. Kory Beach was third at 112 pounds with a triple-overtime win, Alfonso Gonzalez was fourth at 140 pounds, Zach Mozenter was fifth at 145 and Austin Scharfstein was sixth at 152.
”I think they did really well,” said Pirates coach Jesse Palermo. “The guys that placed did very well. Our 215 pounder, Mo Reda, was one place away, and Brian Oglesby at 119 was one place away from placing. I was pleased with those two as well.
”It was encouraging for a number of reasons. Alfonso was the ninth seed and placed four. Austin was the ninth seed and placed sixth. Kory Beach was seeded fourth and placed third.”
Beach lost only to Mike Staub in the MCT, but came back to win in triple overtime for third place. Scharfstein avenged a regular-season loss by pin with a win at the MCT. Improvement was the buzz word for the Pirates, who scored tenfold more points than last year.
”It’s not a huge amount of points,” Palermo said. “But last year, we scored six and had no place finishers.
”That was really encouraging to see them show that much improvement. I was a little disappointed with how they wrestled on the first day, especially Kory Beach and Alfonso. But they came back. Alfonso had the best tournament. He really did jump. He beat really good kids the next day.”
WW-P North was just behind the Pirates in 14th place with 36 points. Andrew Newman was sixth at 189 pounds and James Mulhall was sixth at 119 pounds.
”Overall, we did pretty close to what I was looking for,” said Knights coach Bill Mealy. “Almost everybody got at least one win out of the tournament. Only a couple guys didn’t.”
Newman and Mulhall led the way for North. Both are just sophomores, who will look to improve on their finishes next year.
”James and Andrew making it to sixth was nice,” Mealy said. “Andrew had some tough matches. He had a lot of one-point matches, and he lost a triple overtime match. They were heartbreakers, but I told him he’s come so far. Last year, he wouldn’t have even been in them.
”It’s really good for James. He’s getting more and more confident on his feet. I’d like to see him get more aggressive there. He’s too concerned with finding a perfect set-up. There’s rarely going to be a perfect set-up. He just has to get himself in a good position and go, and once he gets that going, he’s going to take off from there.”
Princeton Day School was 15th. The Panthers’ Andrew Krech scored seven points.

