By Andy Loigu

The Warren Hills girls have been there before, in 1997, but for the Hackettstown boys basketball program this was a first, winning a sectional title on Tuesday night. Also, in girls wrestling, Katrina Kling of Warren Hills reached the state final in Atlantic City, settling for second place at 114 pounds in overtime on Saturday.

Hackettstown won with its senior leader, Tyler Gorczyca, sidelined by injury. Thanks to everybody giving it their all on defense, the Tigers would not be denied. After taking a 17-11 lead in the first quarter of the championship game, they held North Star Academy to a paltry 18 points the rest of the way, waltzing to a 55-29 win.

Junior guard Michael D’Aconti led the scoring with 20 points. Junior guard Shawn Morgan scored 13 and senior forward Tyler Kirkpatrick added eight, giving the offense balance from the front court.

“This is a tremendous group of young men,” veteran coach Mike McDonagh said about his Tigers, who stormed through the brackets with a 79-42 win over Harrison, a 69-55 win over Newark West Side, and a 59-50 win over Ridgefield Park (hometown of Ozzie Nelson) on their way to the final.

There is little time to celebrate, as the Tigers play again tomorrow night against the North Jersey Section 1 champs in the state semifinal. Essentially, the game is for the Group 2 championship of North Jersey. The winner of the Central vs. South game may just be facing the Tigers for the state title in just a few days, let us hope.

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This one’s for the girls, as the country song would say, whoever wished upon a star, whoever had a broken heart.

Warren Hills won the North 2 Group 3 sectional the hard way, on the road at Chatham. As is the case for most winning basketball teams, they did it with defense, 42-36. The Streaks outscored the Cougars 13-5 in the fourth quarter, a tough thing to do on the road against a good team with vocal fans.

Heather Laffan, a 1,000 point scorer over the course of her brilliant career, led Warren Hills offensively with 19 points, including four three-pointers from beyond the arc. Maddie Morgan and Brynn Smith each scored eight, to punish Chatham whenever the Cougars tried to play a box-and-one defense.

The Streaks’ path to the state final included a 64-16 rout of Rahway, a 55-41 win over Payne Tech, and a hard earned 47-43 victory over Mendham.

Both Hackettstown and Warren Hills won their sectional championships with veteran coaches who have been at the same school for over a decade. Like anybody else, coaches get better at what they do with experience.  Too many school boards, over the years, have been too hasty to give the hook to a coach when the team is having a hard time winning. In some cases, the hook has come when a board member’s precious child is sitting on the bench. To those board members (they know who they are) this columnist simply would say, the coach wants to win as much as you do, and playing time is merit based. Get over it and tell your child to work on his or her game.

Also, the longer you can keep consistency in the coaching situation going, the coach is able to build a sustainable program which keeps getting better for years to come as young players buy in to the system.

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In wrestling, Warren Hills’ Katrina Kling came ever so close, within seconds, to winning the 114-pound girls championship at Atlantic City on Saturday.

She led Bloomfield freshman Kira Pipkins by a point with two seconds left on the clock. You could say she was “clinging” to a lead. Pipkins had gotten an early takedown, but Kling battled to a 3-2 lead with a takedown of her own and an escape.

Pipkins, who won her quarterfinal and semifinal bouts by fall and looked impressive in doing so, said afterward that she told herself losing is not an option. She tied the bout with a buzzer beating escape and struck again with a takedown in the overtime for a sudden victory. “I had to find that next gear,” she said.

Congratulations to Katrina Kling for an outstanding and exciting season at Warren Hills, which has done much to popularize girls wrestling.

.…Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.