Knights’ Persico, Pirates’ Scharfstein win MCT wrestling titles
By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
ROBBINSVILLE — In dual meets, sheer lack of numbers have kept the West Windsor-Plainsboro High North and WW-P South wrestling teams from having the kind of success they would like to have during the season.
But in Saturday’s Mercer County Tournament finals, both teams showed that with enough hard work a champion can still emerge.
The Knights produced their first MCT champion since Jeff Rotella in 2006 when Matt Persico won the 160-pound title with a 5-2 win over Justin Scott of Lawrence. And WW-P South’s Austin Scharfstein became the Pirates first county champion since Misha Episov in 2005 when he captured the 171-pound title with an 11-5 win over James Cocorles of Allentown.
In the overall team standings, Princeton High finished 11th, WW-P South was 12th and WW-P North finished 14th.
For Scharfstein, the title at 171 was redemption after finishing third a year ago. The senior had hoped to make the finals as a junior a year ago, but lost early and needed to wrestle his way back to get third place. That provided the motivation to win the title this year.
”With the third place last year, I wasn’t happy how I got there,” Scharfstein said. “I got upset and had to wrestle back to get third. I would have rather had a shot at some of those top seeds. But when I was on the podium last year, I looked to my left and I looked to my right and they were both seniors. So I thought, who is the top dog now?
”I was wrestling every week and was working out almost every day. This is one of the goals on my list. Regionals and states are also goals that I have. As happy as I am to win, I can’t get too happy yet because it is not even halfway done.”
In addition to Scharfstein’s title, the Pirates had two other wrestlers medal at the MCT. Tom Loury was fifth at 145 pounds, while Liam Kieman was fifth at 215.
”I hope this sends a message that even though our program the past couple years has had some struggles, that there are still some strong individuals on the team,” Scharfstein said. “This shows the rest of the county that even though we might have holes in our lineup there are kids on the team that you can’t take lightly.”
Overall, the Pirates came away happiest about their winner but pleased to have made some overall progress.
”It’s exciting to have my first finalist and champion as a coach,” said Jesse Palermo, who is in his third season as the Pirates’ head coach. “He got upset last year early and then he had four pins to come back and get third. It was a good performance but obviously not what he was hoping for.
”I was really happy with Tom Loury at 145 coming back to get fifth place. I was happy with Liam Kieman. I always like it when my guys finish on off numbers because it means they won their last match which is a nice closer. Obviously you’d like to have guys place higher, but I was really proud of them. They both went 4-2 and I know Liam beat two kids he lost to earlier in the year and Tom lost to a kid and then beat him for fifth place.”
Like Scharfstein, Persico gave his school its first MCT winner in several years. He came into the tournament as the No. 5 seed and got his biggest win when he upset No. 1 seed Marc Schumm of Ewing, 7-6, in the semifinals.
”I just came in trying to be confident and I felt like anything could happen if I wrestled well and just let it go and be aggressive,” Persico said. “I felt like if I could get past Schumm then after that I could pretty much take anyone. I’ve never won this before and it is a great feeling when you win it. It should give me great confidence going into districts.
”I had not wrestled against (Schumm) before because I went 171 in that match. I just tried to go in positive and wrestle my way. I guess it worked out. Hopefully our team will start getting bigger and we’ll have more county champions.”
Knights’ coach Bill Mealy was confident that if he kept wrestling the way he had been lately, Persico had a shot at a title.
”The way he has been wrestling the last few matches, it put him at the next level,” Mealy said. “He was doing a lot of defensive wrestling, but now he is starting to use aggressive moves and it has paid off. It started with the first match here today where he wrestled real smart against the top-seeded kid from Ewing. All the hard work he has done paid off.
”Our team is a group. Now we need them all to adopt Matt’s work ethic. If nothing else, it does show them that hard work does pay off.”
Princeton did not have an individual champion or finalist, but the Little Tigers did put four wrestlers into the semifinals. Ian Snyder came away with a third-place finish at 112, while Nick Gillette was third at 275. Tim Miranda finished fourth at 119, while Scott Yehl was fourth at 152.
”I thought Ian could win this thing,” Princeton coach Rashone Johnson said. “He got a nice win when he beat (Jared) Staub. That should help him for the state tournament and seeding. That is a good win. Tim Miranda wrestled very well this weekend. A couple of things in his matches could have gone the other way. Scott wrestled real well. It was real close with (Drew) Reca in that last match. And Nick had a good tournament. He’s been wrestling real solid all year. He’s wrestled real tough and he improves every time he goes out there and competes.”
Johnson was pleased with some of the individual efforts, but came away feeling like his team could have done even more.
”I really thought we were going to place in the top four as a team,” Johnson said. “I felt like the tournament was up for grabs. It was a matter of who was going to come in and take it. When you look at the dual meets there is no team that is clear-cut dominating everybody. It’s all about matchups and how you compete. A lot of the scores are less than seven points. And the ones that are more than seven points have a lot of decisions.”