PHILLIPSBURG, NJ (January 20, 2025) – Going into this wrestling season, wrestling fans and teams understood that both Rumson-Fair Haven and Phillipsburg would go on to have historic seasons. When the schedule first came out it was marked on most people’s calendars that this match would be the one of the marquee matchups of the week if not the season. But would anyone have expected a runaway win for the Bulldogs, especially in Phillipsburg in that environment with a community who’s historically known as a wrestling town? They seem to think they had a fair chance of doing so and they have opened many people’s eyes the way they came out against the Stateliners. Rumson Fair Haven’s Head Coach Eleazar DeLuca, has been spending the primary focus of just keeping going at it and to never look back.
“The secret sauce is to drill, and drill, and drill and drill some more. It’s what we do. We work hard and we drill,” Coach DeLuca said of his team. Boy, did they really showcase their wrestling identity in many of the bouts they won.
The drilling mentality started at 175lbs with Cole Panghorn who spent more on the mat working on back points than anything else en route to his 15-0 tech fall four seconds into the third period over Derek Stone of the Stateliners, who stepped up to the plate for the Stateliners a season ago filling in for the injured Caleb Rivera who is now graduated from Phillipsburg. The bonus points kept piling up with another tech fall win for Rumson at 190lbs, Luke Dougherty and a pin at 215lbs from Conor DeLaney.
285lbs was one of the “closer” bouts of the evening between Rumson-Fair Haven’s Matt Smith and Phillipsburg’s Ben Ellis. Despite no scoring occurrence at the end of one period, the rest of the match turned into pure top wrestling dominance from Smith who took bottom to start the second period and got a reversal early in the second period and rode out that period heading into the third period. Interestingly enough, Ellis took bottom but did not come close to getting out and was hit with stalling twice that sealed the deal for Smith to escape with a 3-0 win.
The Stateliner’s promising freshman, Zachary Swingle got his team on the board with six points as he pinned Luke Eberhard at the 1:23 mark. Following with additional wins from the bulldogs with an impressive 8-0 win for Eamon Fry over Anthony Pettenelli. Fry, who was up 4-0, knew that he needed to produce bonus points and he was able to do just that with 7 seconds to go in the bout when he threw in a late turk that got him four back points right before the buzzer sounded.
“As coach said, all we do is drill. I just caught him under pressure and just got it done,” Fry said of his bonus point win.
Another key win that was highlighted by Coach DeLuca was the 132lber Joaquin Duque who faced Owen Garriques of the Stateliners. With what was supposed to be a evenly matched bout, Duque ended up getting another bonus point victory for the bulldogs with a 8-0 win. Duque show his mental toughness in all three periods that consisted of a strong takedown towards the end of the first period, a reversal early in the second, and a takedown to solidify his victory.
“We knew that [Garriques] was tough. [He] has beaten Joaquin previously in middle school and I think multiple times [in the past]. Joaquin just went out and put on a dominating performance and showed how much he has improve [since then],” Coach DeLuca said of Duque’s history against Garriques.
Massimo Gonzalez (132lbs), Luke Geleta (144lbs), and Gavin Geleta (157lbs) all picked up wins for the Stateliners while Gavin Hawk (165 lbs) received a forfeit to end things for the team on a little bit on a higher note.
With this statement of a win for Rumson-Fair Haven’s wrestling history, Coach DeLuca and his coaching staff are doing what they can to build a strong foundation and culture in the community for wrestling and if it means to travel all over the state to get the best competition, they’ll do it no matter what the odds are.
“We’re building that same culture that Phillipsburg has and wrestling, we’re building it at the shore and at Rumson-Fair Haven ,” Coach DeLuca said. “It was a statement win to come into Phillipsburg (a historically tough wrestling program) and put on what we felt was a dominating performance.”
This the second time that Rumson-Fair Haven has been in the Hunterdon Warren Sussex area this weekend as on Friday night, the Bulldogs wrestled the North Hunterdon Lions with yet another statement win with a 52-24 showing. As Coach DeLuca said in a interview, they are making the trip back home tonight and to drill this week and prepare for their upcoming competition, which many wrestling fans know won’t be a walk in the park.
What ‘s up next for these two teams?:
Rumson-Fair Haven will be traveling back home to prepare for their home match on Wednesday night (01/22) versus St. John Vianney and the Shore Conference Individual Tournament (01/24-25). As for Phillipsburg, they will need to go back to the drawing board and work on their mistakes in tonight’s match to prepare for the Return to the Pit match date with Bridgewater-Raritan Wednesday night (01/22) and classic state borders showdown at Easton High School in Pennsylvania Saturday night (01/25).
