No. 4 North Brunswick wins first GMC Tournament title in program history

No. 4 North Brunswick placed five in the finals and crowned two champions to win the Greater Middlesex Girls Tournament on Sunday in Piscataway. It marked the first time in program history that the Raiders had won the GMC team crown, after finishing third a year ago. East Brunswick finished second with 161.5 points while St. Thomas Aquinas placed third, with 134 points. Old Bridge was fourth, with 118.5 and JFL Iselin was fifth, with 86. “The girls demonstrated all of the work they did all year,” North Brunswick coach David Saley said after the win. “Most of these girls were in the room from March. They worked out every day and the mat time is finally starting to pay off. “They wrestled tough competition all year, they wrestled under lights before and I’ve taken the girls to a lot of these other towns that are known for wrestling. Now we’re kind of known for wrestling.” The N.J. High School Sports newsletter is now appearing in mailboxes 5 days a week. Sign up now and be among the first to get all the boys and girls sports you care about, straight to your inbox each weekday. North Brunswick got titles from Gabrielle Roberts at 138 and 235 pounder Rahkai Degrasse. Roberts earned her gold by pinning Metuchen’s Caelum Ritzdorf in 3:47 in the final. It was the second consecutive year that Roberts had been crowned GMC champ, having won the 138 pound title in 2024. Degrasse earned her title the hard way, avenging last year’s loss in the finals to North Plainfield’s Amaree Walker. Although Walker took an early 3-0 lead on an opening takedown, Degrasse closed the gap to 3-2 with a first period reversal and then took the lead 4-3 when she reversed again in the second period. Shortly thereafter, Degrasse ended it when she slipped in a half and pinned Walker in 3:40. While North Brunswick was winning its first team title, two wrestlers were earning the first GMC individual titles in their schools' histories. Both 120 pounder Aubrey Ramos of Middlesex and 185 pounder Sruthi Murugan of South Brunswick took home the gold, with Ramos scoring a first period pin in the final over Natale Pitti of Monroe and Murugan needing just 2:12 to pin North Brunswick’s Melanie Luna-Vasquez in their final. St. Thomas Aquinas, which took a surprising third place, in spite of bringing only seven scoring-eligible wrestlers, had two champions on the day. Three time state place winner Saniyah Queen won her third straight GMC title at 145 when she lowered the boom on North Brunswick’s Sophia Rodriguez, picking up a pin in the finals in just 41 seconds. At 114, Queen’s sophomore teammate, Isabella Bonilla won her title in sudden victory in the most dramatic bout of the finals round. Bonilla held a 1-0 lead over Monroe’s Aman Cheema late in the third period when she was called for stalling with just 20 seconds left in regulation, tying the match and sending it into overtime. Bonilla just missed spinning behind for a takedown as both wrestlers went out of bounds with less than 10 seconds in the first overtime. But Bonilla was was able to work off a tie up, catch Cheema off balance, and drop her to the mat for a takedown as the buzzer sounded to come away with a 4-1 overtime win. “I don’t really know, to be honest, because it’s all just a blur,” Bonilla said when asked to describe the bout’s final moments. “My adrenaline was so high. She didn’t go down the right way. I didn’t finish it the right way. I kind of, like, muscled her over. It just felt like I pancaked her. Boom. I got up and I was, like, ‘What just happened?’” Fourth place team finisher Old Bridge also had a pair of individual champions as Mackenzy Brennan won the title at 126 and Sofia Sousa took gold at 165. For Brennan it was an improvement over her third place finish a year ago, when she was knocked out of the tournament by teammate Adriana Farese, who went on to finish first. This time, Brennan made certain to keep the gold medal for herself as she scored a 3-0 finals win over St. Thomas Aquinas' Aniyah Garcia. After a scoreless first period, Garcia chose top to start the second period. But Brennan was able to escape and, after choosing down to start the third, was able to get a reversal to earn the win. “I was thinking that I just had to fight really hard to get an escape and score,” Brennan said of being confronted with Garcia’s offense on top. “It was just a mindset that I had to have in order to escape. (After the reversal) I had to stay strong and I knew that I had to have a dominating rest of the match.” Sousa won Old Bridge’s second title of the night when she won a battle between returning GMC champions. Her opponent, St. Thomas Aquinas' Makayla Decker, was the 152 pound champ a year ago and was seeking redemption after having been pinned by Sousa just two weeks ago. At first, it seemed like Decker might get it as she jumped out to a 6-0 lead. But Sousa was undaunted, and, with less than 30 seconds remaining in the match, she led 10-8 when Decker let her up in hopes of getting a match tying takedown. Instead, it was Sousa who got the takedown, putting Decker to her back and picking up a pin in 5:21. For her efforts, Sousa was named the tournament’s Upper Weight Outstanding Wrestler by a vote of the coaches. In another matchup of returning champions, East Brunswick’s Olivia Mitchell, the 114 pound champion a year ago, earned her second straight GMC title when she defeated Perth Amboy’s Leaeah Gutierrez by pin in 2:31 in the 107 pound final. Mitchell and Gutierrez were sparring through the first period, but once the two wrestlers got down on the mat, Mitchell controlled the action, getting a reversal and picking up the fall. “I couldn’t get my shots,” Mitchell said of her finals win. “And then, when I was on bottom, I was just trying to go for a quick stand up. But it didn’t work out. “Sneaky toe,” Mitchell added of turning Gutierrez. “And then I kind of tried for a bar, but it didn’t really work out. Then she went to her back, and I didn’t really expect that.” As a result of her win, Mitchell was awarded the Light Weight Outstanding Wrestler Award by a vote of the coaches. Another defending champ, Old Bridge’s Samantha Larkin, also lost in the final when she ran into a buzzsaw by the name of Jane Rodrigues at 100 pounds. Piscataway’s Rodrigues was all business as she took Larkin down and delivered the pin in just 42 seconds to win the title. The GMC Tournament served as something of a coming out party for last year’s 126 pound state champion, Eva Altamirano of South Plainfield.

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NO. 4 NORTH BRUNSWICK WINS FIRST GMC TOURNAMENT TITLE IN PROGRAM HISTORY

MICHAEL HOLCOMBE | FOR NJ ADVANCE MEDIA

NJ.com | 1/26/2025

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Holcombe for NJ Advance Media