SOUTH BRUNSWICK: South Brunswick is B-lightful at counties

By Rich Fisher, Sports Editor
   PISCATAWAY — Joe Dougherty does not grade on results, he grades on effort.
   And the effort shown by his South Brunswick High wrestling team at last weekend’s Greater Middlesex Conference was enough to earn an honor mark.
   ”Overall, I’d say it’s a B,” Dougherty said Saturday night, after the Vikings finished ninth with 92 points. “I saw improvement throughout the team.
   ”They wrestled hard on Friday night, they upset a couple kids. We brought nine kids to day two; we haven’t done that in a long time. We advanced as many kids as the better teams in the counties. Which means we have a fair amount of good kids ourselves.”
   Good, and still trying to climb toward great.
   The Vikes had one finalist in 171-pounder Brendan Vercammen. Cody Shelcusky was seeded ninth and finished fourth at 160, while Jeff Goldhagen took fourth at 189 despite being a natural 171-pounder.
   ”Cody coming back to place fourth was nice,” Dougherty said. “We have to see if we can get more competitive with the Old Bridge boy (Steven Zafrani) who beat him in the consolation finals. That’s twice we’ve lost to him.
   ”We would have liked to see Goldhagen take third. He wrestled a close bout. But he had a nice day.”
   Seventh-seeded Fran White finished sixth at 103 pounds, while 10th-seeded James Pagano was also sixth at 119.
   ”Frannie White had a really good tournament; I saw improvement there,” Dougherty said. “I also saw improvement with Pagano. I liked the way that he came along.”
   The Vikes had three other sixth-place winners from 130 to 140 pounds in Drew Seroka, Manny Ortiz and Kevin Wadiak.
   ”We had a lot of guys place four, five and six, that shows balance,” Dougherty said. “We don’t have superstars, but we had balance.”
   The one factor that prevented the Vikings from earning an A from their coach (or at least a B-plus) was their inconsistencies on Saturday.
   ”I did see improvement but when it came to today, they were hot and cold,” he said “They had to wrestle four matches in a day. Is that hard to do? Yes, that’s hard to do. Plus the competition continually gets harder and harder.
   ”They didn’t wrestle well all through the day. They had a couple matches here they wrestled well, and a couple of matches there they wrestled well. You can’t just say ‘I’m gonna take this match off’ or ‘I’m gonna take it a little easier this match,’ which is what I kind of felt some of them did. We have to work on that.”
   Sometimes, that attitude can be attributed to a letdown. Wrestlers who lose a match often cannot rally themselves to come back in their first consolation match.
   But Dougherty said that was not the case.
   ”After they lost, they wrestled good and won, then they wrestled bad,” he said. “It wasn’t wrestle bad lose-wrestle bad lose.
   ”The thought process we’re trying to instill is ‘Let’s call it what it is right off the bat, we’re not all winning this tournament. So understand that there’s a possibility you’re going to lose today.’”
   Don’t get excited. The thought process does not end there.
   ”It’s important that once you lose, to say ‘Now the best I can do is place third,’ and you wrestle hard your next match with that as a goal. If you lose that you say ‘The next thing I can get is fifth,’ and that becomes the goal.
   ”I think they did that. You wrestle faceless opponents, and wrestle for goals. We did a little of that today and I thought we were successful. But you get banged up, you’re a little sick, a little tired, you still have to wrestle hard. That’s what wrestlers do.”