South Plainfield wrestling team three-peats with victory over Delsea in Group III final

A turning point for the South Plainfield High School wrestling team came in the middle of the season when a highly respected media outlet dropped the Tigers out of its statewide Top 20 rankings.

“You could look at it two ways when we got taken out of the Top 20,” said senior captain Joe Heilmann, the cornerstone of a program that has been ranked among the Top 20 in the state in at least one season-ending poll for 22 straight years.

“You could either sulk about it or get motivated by it. We said, ‘Hey, we’re a Top 20 team. Let’s prove it.’ So we started practicing even harder, pushing ourselves and we got to this point and now we are state champs.”

READ: About South Plainfield's state semifinal win over Voorhees

The Tigers culminated an impressive postseason run with a 48-23 victory over Delsea for their third consecutive Group III title and 11th overall state crown at RWJBarnabus Health Arena on the campus of Toms River High School North on Sunday night.

Following a 33-32 loss to Emerson-Park Ridge, which the New Jersey Wrestling Writers Association ranks No. 6 in its statewide Top 20 poll, in its final regular-season dual meet, South Plainfield steamrolled its way into the state final, outscoring four state tournament opponents 222-45, or by an average of 44.3 points.

“When that Emerson-Park Ridge match was over, I was confident we could win the groups,” second-year South Plainfield head coach Bill Pavlak said. “With that kind of performance, if we could wrestle that way the next week and a half with that kind of intensity, that’s where I saw and the coaches saw we could do this again.”

As it does every year, South Plainfield prepared itself for the frenetic atmosphere at RWJBarnabus Health Arena, where four matches are wrestled simultaneously on adjacent mats in the semifinal round, by competing at the Virginia Duals, one of the nation’s top invitational tournaments.

“The Virginia Duals is sort of the same atmosphere,” Pavlak said. “There’s tough teams that are nationally ranked and everything is jammed together like this. That’s one reason we go down there, and I think it really pays off. These kids don’t fear anybody – not that they are going to beat everybody – but they don’t really fear any team. I think some teams that came in (last) week to us, I think they kind of feared. They weren’t ready to come into the South Plainfield atmosphere.”

South Plainfield advanced to the Group III championship with a 50-26 victory over Voorhees in the state semifinal earlier in the day. Delsea advanced with a 48-25 semifinal win over Pascack Valley.

The championship meeting was the third straight between South Plainfield and Delsea, which knocked the Tigers out of the state tournament in the state semifinal round four years ago.

“I heard a lot about Delsea when I was coaching at Piscataway,” Pavlak said. “I didn’t even know where Delsea was until I started coaching (at South Plainfield) and looked at the map and saw they were in South Jersey. (After a slow start this season) it seemed like they really started to come around the last two weeks. When I saw they beat St. Augustine, we knew it was going to be a tough match.”

The Tigers won nine bouts, scoring bonus points in all but one of those victories, including pins from Dave Loniewski (120), Tommy Fierro (126), Joe Sacco (145), Marc Giordano (160) and Zach DelVecchio (285).

“The key was getting bonus points,” said Pavlak, whose Tigers registered four falls in under 56 seconds. “A lot of bonus points early on made it a little easier match.”

In a battle of state-ranked heavyweights at 195 pounds, Luke Niemeyer clinched the state title, giving the Tigers an insurmountable 36-23 lead with two bouts left on his one-point decision over Tommy Maxwell.

“My coaches told me we need one more win after 182 and then we would clinch,” Niemeyer said. “I thought I might as well get it out of the way earlier and not have to worry about it after. I knew it was going to be a tough one.”

Freshman 106-pounder Anthony White, one of several newcomers whose presence in the lineup enabled the Tigers to continue their impressive run of state titles, set the tone for the dual meet, opening with a 23-8 technical fall in 5:32 over Asa Walton, who entered the dual meet with a 24-8 record.

“I was expecting to get bonus but it was a slow first period,” said White, who took a 2-0 lead into the second period. “I started to go out there pushing the pace. I kept going forward and I kept coming the whole match. I felt like I set the tone a little bit.”

Chris Recinto followed with a pin at 113 pounds, giving Delsea a 6-5 advantage, its only lead of the night, which Loniewski quickly erased with a 44-second pin at 120 pounds.

The ability of Fierro to make 126 pounds, where he recorded a 55-second pin, enabled Heilmann to bump up to 132, where he majored John Patterson, a tougher foe than Delsea’s 126-pounder. Sacco pinned two bouts later, giving the Tigers their biggest lead to that point, 27-9, midway through the dual meet.

Delsea won four of the next six bouts, trimming the deficit to 33-23 on incumbent state champion Billy Janzer’s technical fall over Brenden Hedden. Niemeyer ended the drama with his 3-2 decision over Maxwell.

“We knew if (the current South Plainfield junior class) were going to win four (state titles) this year was going to be the hardest year,” said Niemeyer, an underclassman who will be joined by several promising newcomers next year. “But the seniors we had this year really stepped up and our first-year wrestler, Marc Giordano, pulled out a big win (with a 22-second pin at 160 pounds). That really helped us get the momentum so we could take this one.”

The son of Steve Giordano, a former state champion for South Plainfield who is now an assistant coach at his alma mater, Marc wrestled through eighth grade but concentrated on soccer upon entering high school.

“We’ve been begging him for years,” Niemeyer said of asking Giordano, who owns a 20-13 record where the Tigers otherwise would have had a hole, to come out for the team. “He wrestled in eighth grade but didn’t continue it. We are really happy he came out, of course, because he really stepped up in big matches.”

Heilmann, University of North Carolina signee whose older brothers, Troy and Nick, also won at least three state titles apiece, said this year’s Group III championship had a different feel than the previous two, even though it came against the same opponent.

“Every year is different,” Heilmann said. “We had a rough start in the beginning of the year, but we came and battled and got what was ours.”

South Plainfield’s rough start included losses to two out-of-state opponents in the Virginia Duals and five losses to teams ranked among the Top 20 in the NJWWA poll. The Tigers end the dual meet portion of the season with a 20-7 record.

“I was on a team with these guys since we were toddlers,” Heilmann said. “At South Plainfield, once you’re born, it’s straight into a singlet. Since we were little growing up, we’ve come so far and got a three-peat.”