SCRANTON, PA (February 22, 2025) – The Sussex County Community College wrestling team finished second overall in Region 19 at the 2025 NJCAA Gulf Atlantic District Championships as nine wrestlers qualify for nationals in Iowa.

The Skylanders wracked up a total of 107 points, which was good enough for fourth place overall, trailing only Andrew College, Camden County College, and Garrett College. This meant that Camden took the top spot in the region as they finished with 146 points.

Individually, all but one wrestler finished in the top five of their respective weight class, which made them an automatic qualifier for nationals. The highest-placing Skylanders on the day were Michael VanderMeulen at 141, Thaylor Sibblies at 149, and Shawn Pawlowski at 184.

All three entered their brackets as the two seed and cruised their way into the final round. They each won their quarterfinals match by pin before winning their semifinals match by major decision. In the finals Sibbiles was defeated by major decision 8-0 against Northampton’s Xavier Arner, and Pawlowski met the same fate against Northampton’s Luke Velekei 15-5. VanderMeulen came the closest to snagging a first place finish, but surrendered an early lead and was eventually pinned by Union’s Joshua Baeza.

At 197, Ryan Flammer showed some heart by coming back from a tough 16-1 tech fall loss in his first match to finish third overall in his bracket. After going down to the consolation bracket he pinned Lackawanna’s Adan Salazar in the first period and then took the third place bout thanks to a disqualification by Christian Preston from Andrew College. 

The other four top five finishes came from Chris Casale at 133, Carlos Delgado at 157, Jose Alvarenga Giron at 165, and Mason Mericle at 174. Casale lost his first match by getting pinned but shook it off quickly as he pinned his next two opponents in the consolation bracket to make it to the third place bout, but fell just short 12-8 against Patrick & Henry’s Nick Daniel. Alvarenga Giron also fell in the third place bout, but along the way he won two of his prior three matches with the wins coming by disqualification and major decision.

Delgado and Mericle rounded out the placements by both finishing fifth in their weight classes by going 2-2 in their matches on the afternoon, including dominant showings in the fifth place bout. Delgado won by decision 10-5 against Union’s Christian Ramos and Mericle defeated Garrett’s Tyberious Clayton by major decision 10-0.

The only odd one out was Carson Citro at 125, who wrestled in place of the injured Roman Citro. Despite going 0-2 in his two matches, he was still able to qualify as one of the seven wild cards. This makes the nine qualified wrestlers for nationals the most in program history, breaking the previous record of seven wrestlers from last season.

Today’s showing was the result of months of hard work and dedication the team put in to achieve this success, and head coach Nick Barzano has nothing but praise for his squad.

“I was very proud of how well the guys wrestled today,” he said. “Most of them pulled off huge upsets or big wins to punch their ticket to Iowa. They rallied as a whole and put the points on the scoreboard to put us in position to qualify everyone we had competing today and to finish runner-up in our region.”

The last stop of the Skylanders in 2025 is the NJCAA National Championships, held in Council Bluffs, Iowa starting on March 7 at 10 a.m. and will last two days ending on March 8.