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Wrestling Names Grapple Opponents, Will Face Illinois The Same Day at NYAC
September 23, 2015 | Wrestling
New York City was already the place to be for Princeton wrestling fans on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but the day got even more enticing recently. Besides wrestling a pair of tough opponents, including one Top-10 team, in the Grapple at the Garden, Princeton will also take on 12th-ranked Illinois that afternoon at the New York Athletic Club.
Princeton, which returns five wrestlers who qualified for the 2015 NCAA Championships, will open Sunday, Nov. 29, by taking on EIWA rival Hofstra during the opening session of the Grapple at the Garden, held at the historic Madison Square Garden. Over the last two seasons, both teams have won at the opposing site, with neither team winning by more than three team points.
The rubber match will be held at the World's Most Famous Arena.
At noon, Princeton will return to the mat to take on Nebraska, which ended last season ranked ninth nationally. The Cornhuskers handed Princeton a 38-6 loss in the 2015 season finale at Dillon Gym, and they return an All-American in junior TJ Dudley.
Princeton will leave the Garden after that match and head over to the nearby New York Athletic Club to take on Illinois and reigning NCAA champion Isaiah Martinez, who became the first freshman to post an undefeated season and win the national championship since Cael Sanderson.
These matches add to an already-loaded schedule, which includes home matches with nationally prominent opponents like Northwestern (Dec. 5), Lehigh (Dec. 5), Rutgers (Jan. 31) and Cornell (Feb. 13).
"Now that we have finalized our schedule, I am thrilled with the teams we are going to face this winter," head coach Chris Ayres said. "Wrestling Hofstra and Nebraska at the Grapple at the Garden, and then Illinois the same day at the NYAC, will make an already-tough schedule tougher, which is exactly what we want. We are going wrestle five Top-15 teams; the most, by far, of our Ivy League rivals. This is the type of schedule we have been working toward and feel that this team has the toughness to handle it."
Princeton will also serve as host of the 2016 EIWA Championships, which will be held March 5-6 at Jadwin Gym. Last year, both Jordan Laster and Chris Perez reached their first EIWA finals, and they joined Abram Ayala, Brett Harner and Ivy League Rookie of the Year Jonathan Schleifer at the NCAA Championships.