Underclassmen signal bright future
by Rudy Brandl, Sports Editor
A quick look at the numbers illustrates the tremendous improvement of this year’s Manville High wrestling team.
There have been seasons this decade in which only one or two wrestlers reached double figures in victories. It hasn’t been uncommon for only one individual to sport a winning record. In many years, no Mustangs reached the second day of district competition.
The Mustangs produced more than 200 bout victories this winter. Three wrestlers won quarterfinal bouts to reach the semifinals, including sophomore 130-pounder Nick Janner, who had finished second at the Somerset County Tournament in January.
Manville boasted three 20-win wrestlers this season, the most in any one year since second-year head coach Pat Gorbatuk donned a singlet 10 years ago. Six Mustangs posted winning records. Ten reached double figures in victories.
Sophomore 112-pounder Devin Burke tied the school record for most wins in a season while leading Manville with a 27-8 record. Burke has amassed 43 victories in his first two years on the varsity mat and is well on pace to breaking Frank Passe’s school record of 88 career wins.
Burke’s season included titles in the Holmdel and Rutgers Prep tournaments and a fourth place in the Somerset County Championships. He ran into the toughest weight class in District 18 and lost a 1-0 bout in the quarterfinal round, preventing him from breaking the school record shared with Passe and John Perone.
While Burke went from 16-12 to 27-8, he wasn’t the only one in the program to make a big jump. Sophomore Ernest Yakobchuk (18-15) won just two bouts in his freshman year. Janner (21-16) was a four-win wrestler a year ago. Junior David Olmsted jumped from one victory to a 14-20 showing. Senior Kevin Sellar nearly doubled his previous career high with a 19-10 campaign.
”You have to be proud of the direction we’re heading in as a program,” Gorbatuk said. “We have a bunch of kids who are better. We have a whole team of guys who are getting better. The team doesn’t get better until the individual wrestlers buy into the system. We’re starting to get that from these kids and it’s nice to see.”
Freshman Peter Hando ranked second on the team with a 23-14 record. Hando was one of three Mustangs to advance to the second day of district action. He wound up placing fourth in District 18. Hando was also second at Rutgers Prep and third at the Holmdel tournament.
Sellar desperately wanted to reach 20 wins but a separated shoulder ultimately cost him that milestone. The senior 171-pounder showed remarkable improvement throughout his career but made the biggest leap after his junior year. After three straight sub-.500 seasons, Sellar was often dominant this winter. He won the Holmdel Tournament, took second at Rutgers Prep and fourth in the district.
Other Mustangs who flirted with 20 wins included Yakobchuk and sophomore 215-pounder David Castro (17-11). Freshmen Ian DeFalco (13-21 at 119 pounds) and Clint Raver (11-18 at 103 pounds) and junior Scott Alpizar (11-20 at 145 pounds) also broke into double figures. Castro was undefeated in home matches.
The Mustangs are still very young. Sellar is the only wrestler graduating. Most of the eligible returnees have at least two years left of scholastic wrestling. If the Mustangs can add a few more big bodies to fill out the upper part of the lineup, they’ll translate more of those impressive individual statistics into team victories.
”If the numbers improve, we could add six, seven more wins in a heartbeat,” Gorbatuk said.

