By Andy Loigu

Congratulations go out to a pair of Hackettstown wrestlers who won titles at the Hunterdon Central Invitational and the boys and girls hoops teams who are off to phenomenal starts this year.

Hackettstown’s Aiden Scheeringa pinned Matawan’s Richard Gomez in just 42 seconds to win the 113 pound crown and the Tigers’ Nicolas Balella grinded it out through a grueling 9-7 battle to outlast Rumson’s Cole Pangborn in the 138 pound final.

In recent neighborhood bragging rights action, the West Morris Wolfpack topped the Tiger wrestlers 51-27 making Hackettstown 3-4 in dual meets.

The Tigers’ girls basketball squad lifted their record to 5-1 with a hard fought 37-33 win over visiting High Point at “The Jungle” on January 4. Rylie Grant led the charge with 21 points and Sadie Willis soldiered a solid eight-point contribution. The High Point Wildcats, a good defensive team, now are 3-2.

The Tigers’ boys have started the hoops season with a six-game win streak (tonight they host Jefferson). You can’t win them all if you don’t win the first six.

A “three-headed monster” of Andrew Carida, Ethan Almeida and Darien Santos led the Tigers with 17, ten and nine points, respectively, to a 60-43 win against Iselin.

BLUE STREAK BUCKETS

Over at Warren Hills the boys were 2-3 and the girls stood at 3-4 at the time of this writing.

In a recent 70-59 loss to a strong Pingry squad, the Streaks boys got 20 points from Blessing Ekwauzi and 13 each from Tom Flaherty and Jayden Aziz.

In a 35-34 cliffhanger loss to perennial nemesis Voorhees, the Warren Hills girls (now coached by longtime assistant Mike Howey) were led by 14 points and seven rebounds from Jaelyn Morris.

Key action on tap, mark your calendar:

The Tiger wrestlers will stay close to home when they visit North Warren in Blairstown at 6 p.m. on January 11. Although they are just 1-4 after a tough early schedule, the Patriots expect to be competitive and gritty. 

The Tigers’ boys basketball contingent hosts 3-5 Lenape Valley for a 7 p.m. tip on January 12, Then they head down to suburban Trenton to face Ewing, one of the state’s best teams, at 1:30 p.m. on January 14, in the Blue Devils’ Den. Hackettstown has shown it can battle good out-of-area teams. The Tigers recently won convincingly over a powerful Iselin team from Middlesex County. Coach Mike Mc Donagh has always said you never learn anything by playing against “cupcakes.”

The Tiger girls don’t have to travel to meet some tough opposition. When they host West Morris at 1 p.m. on January 14, they will face a well coached program that has made winning habitual. Should be a classic game.

Warren Hills welcomes 5-0 Bound Brook to Washington for a 7 p.m. boys basketball tip on January 17. Do the Streaks have a shot?  Sure they do. The game is a rematch of an earlier battle which Bound Brook won on December 20 by a 70-65 score. By turning up the defensive effort a notch, and working hard under the boards, it could be a different result, this time.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.