Matt McCann wrote in his journal every day after last year’s wrestling season.
In addition to his goals of being a 2026 state qualifier and state placer, McCann, a junior at Bridgewater-Raritan High School, wrote about how he came up short of these goals in heartbreaking fashion at Union High School’s NJSIAA Region 4 Wrestling Individual Tournament.
Four of his other teammates, including classmate Trent Levash and three members of last year’s Class of 2025, ultimately advanced to last season’s prestigious NJSIAA State Individual Wrestling Tournament: arguably the country’s most symbolic and difficult high school wrestling tournament.
This will take place from Thursday, March 12, to Saturday, March 14, at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, but the journey to get there in any given year is far from guaranteed.
This setting is one that every high school wrestler in the Garden State dreams about competing in, especially seniors in their final seasons like Bridgewater-Raritan’s Andrew Adell, who has gone three years without an opportunity to wrestle under New Jersey’s brightest lights.
For Adell, the fourth time was the charm on Saturday morning on a day Bridgewater-Raritan Class of 2016 graduate and state placer Kyle Murphy made even more history in his fifth season as the Panthers’ head coach.
Not only did McCann (165, third place) and Adell (113, fourth place) both punch their first tickets to Boardwalk Hall with emphatic pins in their consolation bracket clinchers. After being sidelined late this regular season due to an injury bug that has impacted Bridgewater-Raritan’s roster arguably more this year in all of Murphy’s five seasons in charge, Levash (285, first place) not only helped guide his team to back-to-back state sectional titles at 215 pounds before then voluntarily moving up to the heavyweight class for this year’s state individual tournament.
Levash left no doubt in uncharted territory, as he cruised to a NJSIAA District 14 Wrestling Individual Tournament championship in his individual tournament heavyweight debut before punctuating his return trip to Boardwalk Hall with a Region 4 gold medal in dominant fashion Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7, in Union.
“This has been my favorite and, at the same time, my hardest year in my five years as the head coach and six years coaching at Bridgewater-Raritan,” revealed Murphy, who was named District 14 coach of the year for his efforts last weekend before clinching back-to-back seasons with at least one region champion for the first time as the Panthers’ skipper. “I knew the expectations this year, but I saw the opportunity given I knew how young and new this team was. We peaked at the right time, and I’m really excited about our three that are going on, but I’m really happy for the whole team that got to be a part of such a special season for Bridgewater-Raritan. This team was in a totally different place a few years back than where we are now. I hope that the excitement behind what we’re doing with the help of my staff, the parents, and the community behind us continues to grow here.”
“I’m excited to see that not only going into next week, but for years to come.”
According to the NJSIAA’s online schedule, which indicates that all times are approximate, girls’ pre-quarters, quarters, and the first round of wrestlebacks will launch this year’s edition of the state individual tournament at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 12, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. The corresponding boys’ rounds are projected to follow suit at 11:25 a.m. for all 14 weight classes, which consist of 32 wrestlers per bracket.
Following the event’s seeding to begin tournament week, Levash drew the No. 7 seed in the heavyweight bracket, while McCann is the No. 13 seed at 165 pounds and Adell is the No. 26 seed at 113 pounds.
Day two of the three-day affair is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Friday, March 13, with the second round of boys’ wrestlebacks, quarterfinals, and the third round of wrestlebacks.
At 9 a.m. Saturday, March 14, the sixth and final round of boys’ wrestlebacks is scheduled to begin, while the boys' and girls’ third-place, fifth-place, and seventh-place matches will follow afterwards.
The girls’ finals will occur no earlier than 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon, while the boys’ finals will occur no earlier than 3:30 p.m. after their respective parades.
No matter what happens this weekend, the future will again be bright for Bridgewater-Raritan, given its individual performances over the past couple of weeks.
Including the Panthers’ three aforementioned state qualifiers, eight total wrestlers from Bridgewater-Raritan High School wrestled at Union High School over the weekend, as they placed at least third in their respective district tournament brackets on the weekend of February 28 and March 1.
After advancing to the Region 4 tournament, which took place on Friday night, freshman Lucas Churpakovich (126), junior Michael Garcia (132), and senior Feral Cespedes (175) were each eliminated in the first round. Junior Carmine Vella (157) earned the No. 7 seed and the last first-round bye in his bracket, but he was knocked into the consolation bracket by fall (1:56) against eventual champion Luke Scholz of Cranford High School in the quarterfinals.
As part of a busy Saturday morning, Vella ultimately was defeated by Bayonne High School’s Youssef Elgarhi by technical fall, 18-2 (5:57), to conclude his junior season.
Senior Paige Karp (120) then competed in the NJSIAA Region 2 Girls’ Individual Wrestling Tournament at Union High School on Sunday, March 8, as the No. 8 seed in her bracket. She was defeated by a fall in both of her matches, including against No. 7-seeded and eventual state qualifier Razz Smith (2:24), who won against Karp and two other contestants in the consolation bracket to punch her ticket to Boardwalk Hall.
Karp’s elimination ended her amazing and impactful career as captain of the Panthers’ girls’ squad with a record of 25-8 in her final year on campus.
“I’m always proud to see my friends succeeding in this sport,” said of his fellow region qualifiers by Adell, who was eliminated in the opening round of the Region 4 Tournament as a sophomore, split his two matches as a junior, but ultimately cemented his status as a state qualifier in his final year on campus. “Even if they didn’t get the outcome they wanted, every loss is a win in some way. You learn to improve and look to see what you can do better, and a lot of them like Michael, Lucas, and [freshman Hunter Karp] are guys I work with every day. I see how hard they work in there, and it stinks to see them fall short, especially when you work with someone every day and know how hard they work.”
“It’s good to know that they’re going to stand right back up, go right back out on the mat, and give it their all the very next day.”
Unfortunately, seniors Lucas Pelc and Gabe Medina-Coello were unable to compete in the individual tournament at the lightweight and heavyweight ends of the Panthers’ weight classes, respectively, due to injury. Pelc’s final bout was a victory by pin in the Panthers’ 33-29 victory over Union High School in the North 2, Group 5 title match back on February 18, while Medina-Coello’s final bout was also a victory via decision in the Panthers’ 37-30 Group 5 semifinals loss at Old Bridge High School.
Unlike other sports, losses like Bridgewater-Raritan’s to Old Bridge in the NJSIAA Wrestling Team Tournament only marked the beginning of the true postseason for New Jersey’s individual wrestlers: a two-week slate of three major tournaments (districts, regions, states) that will end in Boardwalk Hall with three representatives from Bridgewater-Raritan.
This is despite all of the adversity it faced along the way, which Bridgewater-Raritan has offset with its motivation and a drive to go all out and improve inside and outside of its wrestling room.
Or in McCann’s case, being on the wrong end of a borderline call as time expired in this blood-round bout at the Region 4 tournament last year that ended his sophomore season.
Not only did he attest to this one year later after coming up seconds short of a trip to Boardwalk Hall.
One week after winning a District 14 championship at South Plainfield High School where his dad built a wrestling powerhouse as the Tigers’ head coach, Matt McCann completed his bid to Atlantic City while his dad coached him on the Panthers’ bench.
“It’s really special,” shared McCann of what it meant to achieve his initial goal with his dad, Kevin McCann, who along with Ray Jazikoff, Robert Saum, Sammy Alvarez, and Jeremy Benton make up Bridgewater-Raritan’s All-Star cast of assistant coaches in 2025-26. “I know he’s my biggest supporter. He’s always in my corner who wants to see the best for me. I’m glad I can say that I made him proud today and these past two weeks. It’s only up from here, and I’m only going to keep improving and getting better.”
“My goal now is to not only make day two, but to place down there this year and hopefully get my name out there.”
In his 165-pound Region 4 bracket, McCann was notably awarded the No. 3 seed over Brearley/Dayton’s Ryder Vorndran, who was defeated by McCann by decision, 8-4, in the finals of the Mike Dessino Invitational back on December 13. This resulted in McCann being named the Middlesex High School event’s Most Outstanding Wrestler amongst the upper weight classes.
It also only foreshadowed the continued rise of the motivated Bridgewater-Raritan junior.
Vorndran was ultimately awarded the No. 4 seed, likely due to his season-opening loss to McCann, and this gave him a first-round matchup at Region 4 while McCann earned a first-round bye.
McCann’s No. 3 seed also helped him avoid an early matchup against eventual champion and top-seeded Joshua Piparo of Saint Peter’s Preparatory School, which had an event-high 11 state qualifiers and five champions en route to the Region 4 team title (258 points) over North Hunterdon Regional High School (163.5 points) and Pope John XXIII Regional High School (124.5 points). Factoring in just public schools, North Hunterdon led the way amongst fourth-place Cranford (82.5 points), fifth-place Watchung Hills Regional High School (70 points) and sixth-place Union High School (69 points).
Bridgewater-Raritan took seventh place at 63.5 points, while Rahway High School (60 points) rounded out the region’s top eight schools.
McCann opened up Friday night with a 41-second pin of South Plainfield’s James Bermingham, but an early takedown in the semifinals by Pope John’s Lukas Katsigiannis gave the Lions’ wrestler a lead he never relinquished. An escape by McCann at the first-period buzzer trimmed his deficit to 3-1, but Katsigiannis extended his lead to 5-2 after two periods.
An escape at the five-minute mark by McCann put him in range of a go-ahead takedown. Katsigiannis, who entered the tournament with a 29-2 record, ultimately held on for a 5-3 victory by decision that eliminated McCann from championship contention.
However, McCann more than made up for that in the consolation bracket.
His pin in 3:49 against North Hunterdon’s Dylan McGuinness clinched his status as a state qualifier. In a full-circle moment, a 17-1 walk-off victory by technical fall (4:35) against Vorndran in the third-place match punctuated McCann’s tournament with a bronze medal.
“I know the goal is not done, but this is a stepping stone and a dream come true, because I am going down to A.C. where anything can happen,” McCann went on to say of achieving his goal and his performance over the weekend. “My weight class here [at 165 pounds] is probably one of the toughest regions at 165. You have three of the best guys in the state in me, Lucas, and [Joshua], but those two are really good wrestlers. Maybe I didn’t wrestle my best against Lucas, but I had a pretty decent match against him. It was close, and that just shows I can wrestle against these guys and I’m right there with these top guys in our state. It really shows my improvement going from an 8-4 decision [against Vorndran] to [tech-falling] him. I know that if I wrestle my best and my way, I’m going to beat anyone, and winning is going to take care of itself.”
“I’m going to make it show when I go down to A.C.”
Also, the No. 3 seed in his 113-pound bracket, Adell also had some of that early pressure relieved of a first-round bye into the double elimination portion of the bracket. In his quarterfinals matchup against Cranford’s DJ Torsone, Adell struck first with a first-period takedown before eventually winning by fall (3:48) to advance to the semifinal round against a familiar foe: North Hunterdon’s Owen Fol.
Fol had defeated Adell by decision, 8-2, back in the Panthers’ 42-28 dual match loss at North Hunterdon on January 21. With both wrestlers’ trips to the Region 4 Tournament already set, Fol then tallied a 13-3 victory over Adell by major decision in the finals of the District 14 Tournament. Ironically, Fol won by the same major decision score of 13-3 against Adell on Saturday morning, but Adell went the distance again, and most of Fol’s points came in the final 30 seconds of the first and second periods.
Fol went on to finish runner-up to Arthur L. Johnson High School’s Matty Ortega, who won the title with a 4-1 victory by decision.
With the valuable time on the mat he was able to collect, Adell was able to surge out of the gate against Westfield High School’s Anthony Russo in the blood round of the consolation bracket, where Adell clinched his trip to Atlantic City on a 53-second pin.
Adell then led 5-3 at the end of his third-place match against Rahway High School’s Phillip Griffin, who lifted up Adell in the closing seconds and had Adell on his back looking for the go-ahead takedown. After a late deliberation by the bout’s officials, Griffin was awarded the victory by pin in 5:59: just one second before the final buzzer.
While it was an unfortunate end to Adell’s Region 4 run, his spirits afterwards were extremely positive, and both wrestlers embraced after the awards presentation that resulted in them, Fol, and Ortega all bound for Boardwalk Hall.
“I’ve been in this program for 13 years, but I was seeded third coming into this tournament, so I was projected to go,” said afterwards by Adell, who was seen jumping into the arms of his head coach immediately after his state-qualifying pin in the blood round. “Crazy stuff happens in this sport, but you have to be ready for any situation at any moment. Just to be able to clinch that and have that moment with my coach was something incredible that I have been waiting a long four years for. But I like to look back at my losses, see what I could have done differently to improve in the future, and make myself better every day in the practice room. To go out and pin someone in 30 seconds is great, but you don’t learn anything from that.”
“Like I said earlier, there’s a win in every loss, and that’s progress.”
Both Adell and McCann will be joined by a returning state qualifier in Levash, who jumped into the individual heavyweight bracket for the first time in his career after wrestling virtually all of his previous career bouts at 215 pounds.
After sealing back-to-back Somerset County Tournament titles on January 17, Levash was unable to wrestle for almost one month due to injury. In the Panthers’ aforementioned sectional finals victory against Union, he tallied a 29-second pin. Levash then followed that up by handing Old Bridge senior, eventual Region 5 finalist, and fellow state qualifier Zachary Florio his first loss of the 2025-26 season by pin (1:55) in Bridgewater-Raritan’s Group 5 state semifinals loss.
If that was not impressive enough, Levash’s transition into the heavyweight bracket proved to be seamless.
In his five bouts spanning the District 14 and Region 4 tournaments, Levash pinned all but one opponent. This occurred against North Hunterdon’s Anthony DeSimone in last weekend’s District 14 final, but Levash still won a 6-3 decision to win a district title in back-to-back years.
Levash was able to attest for that in the Region 4 bracket, where he pinned DeSimone (3:33) to punch his ticket to Atlantic City after cruising to a 49-second pin against Carteret High School’s Aiden Best in the quarterfinal round. His championship bout was a thriller against Plainfield High School’s Raymir Brighton, who offset Levash’s initial takedown halfway into the first period with a late escape to take just a 3-1 deficit into the second period.
An escape by Brighton early in the second period got him to within one point, but Levash ultimately lived up to the Region 4 tournament’s No. 1 seed with a takedown into a pin in 3:01 a short time later.
“I have to just thank my friends, coaches, teammates, and everyone in my life,” said by Levash of his latest accomplishment, which gave the Panthers back-to-back Region 4 champions after Bridgewater-Raritan had gone eight years without a gold medalist. “It’s not even the weight that matters, but how much I work in the practice room with Coach Murphy, all of my coaches, and all of my teammates. That’s what really goes into it, and that’s why I deserve this. On the team, we work hard every day, and there is not one day where we take anything off. We work as a team, we’ve been very successful with two sectional titles that I’ve been here for and hopefully another next year.”
“That’s all I’m working for – wherever Coach Murphy needs me.”
In this case, the time to shine at Boardwalk Hall this coming week to round out the 2025-26 season.
At Boardwalk Hall, one loss will eliminate a wrestler from state championship contention. While a wrestler would still be in contention for a top-eight podium spot with a single loss, a second loss would end that wrestler’s season.
Pressure that the Panthers and their three state qualifiers are familiar with.
“Drew has been with us for four years now, and he has been getting better every year,” praised Murphy of Adell, McCann, and Levash. “This year was a big cut for him back down to [113 pounds]. We knew it was going to be challenging for him all year, but he came through when it mattered. He has been resilient all year, and we’re going to see that continue next week. After the way last year ended for McCann so bittersweetly and not the way we wanted, the hard work that he put in this offseason and the continued work that he puts in every day with Coach Alvarez has made a light-years difference in a loaded weight [of 165 pounds]. Trent was banged up this year, but we got him back right before sectionals, after he moved up to heavyweight from [215 pounds], and he pinned his way into the regions. It’s outstanding. I couldn’t be prouder of Trent and having back-to-back region champs after we had a long gap of eight years without one.”
“Now, having one in back-to-back years is pretty exciting, especially since Trent is a junior and we’re expecting more next year.”
As a top-eight seed at the state individual tournament this weekend, Levash will also bid to return to the second day of action, which is scheduled to go as late as 8:40 p.m. on Friday night and conclude with the fifth round of boys’ wrestlebacks.
“It’s such an experience to be down there, especially to come down again with two of my teammates,” concluded of returning to Atlantic City by Levash, who was a state qualifier last year with Class of 2025 graduates Mark Marsigliano, Lerrod Smalls, and Matt Di Eduardo: the Panthers’ previous Region 4 champion from last season. “It’s just a surreal feeling that I get to go down again surrounded by my teammates and my coaches.”
“I want to place on that podium, so I’m going to be grinding and working hard for that.”