The shining moment of Senior Night against Rahway came during senior Maxwell Rotter’s match. In the 120lb matchup after a few losses, Rotter needed to fight for every point. Coming out of the first period up, 3-2, with both wrestlers gridlocked, the next four minutes would not be easy. Scoring five points in the second period and adding two in the final two minutes, Rotter walked away with a seven-point victory and the first win of the meet for Westfield.
Unfortunately, standout performances from Rotter and several other Westfield wrestlers were not enough to secure a victory. Rahway walked into the gym undefeated and left in the same state with Westfield reeling from an unsatisfactory performance. “Our biggest problem is that we aren’t doing anything collectively, we aren’t a team yet,” said head coach Glen Kurz.
The meet started with a huge loss for the Blue Devils. Sophomore and breakout star Jake Zemsky, who opened for the Blue Devils, went down in the first period of his match with a shoulder injury, and unfortunately, he could not finish out his match.
This led to a string of defeats for Westfield, and even with the shift of momentum from Rotter’s win, Rahway proved to be a worthy opponent. Physicality was the name of the game all night, and Rahway used this to their advantage, wrestling hard every minute.
But, even with a final result, other Blue Devils had solid matches throughout the night. Sophomore Luke Sluberski and Danny Berardi won by a pin during the meet, fighting through two periods before finally sealing their wins.
Even without a team win, Rotter felt like their team gave their best during a meaningful meet. “It’s always fun to come out on Senior Night. We have a lot of fans here and coming out with a win is really important, it’s a culture here and with my parents in the stands it means a lot tonight.”
In order to improve their overall performance going forwards, Kurz said, “We need more intensity in practice, we need to hold our partners accountable, we need to improve our conditions and start becoming a team where we care about each other.”
The Blue Devils had a quick turnaround. Today, they competed in a quad meet away at 10 a.m. against Clifton, Teaneck, and Bloomfield at Bloomfield High School.
