Gibril Huq ended the recreation wrestling season on top of the podium with a gold medal eight years in the making.
The eighth-grader has been a part of the Ewing Recreation Wrestling program since he was 6 years old. Each year, he had competed in the end-of-season Delaware River Wrestling League tournament.
“He always came short,” said Ewing head coach Dashawn Tye. “There were times he didn’t take any medals. There were times he got third. Two years in a row, he took second. This year, I told him this is going to be your year. If you want this, you have to come get this, be smart, listen to us and give everything you have. And he came home with a gold medal. As soon as he got his hand raised, the kid cried like a baby. He almost made me cry. He was so proud of himself, and I was so proud of him.”
There were more happy tears last year from Lilia Policarpio, who went through almost the entire season before finally picking up a win. Lilia was overjoyed when she finally picked up and win, and she returned even stronger this year.
“There’s a girl that lost every match, and she won that one match and it made her feel good,” Tye said. “This year, same girl, she won 11 matches this year and she came in second place at the end-of-the-season tournament.”
Another second-place finisher from Ewing was Matthew Vanderhoff. He thought his season was over when he broke his elbow in the second match of the year. He kept coming to practices and doing whatever he was allowed to, then got his cast off the week before the final tournament.
“I had to put him in so he had a spot then, but I said, ‘I’ll watch him this whole week and see if I’m comfortable letting him do the tournament,’” Tye recalled. “Something I love about what his father said, he didn’t question it, he said, ‘Tye, whatever you decide, I have nothing but trust in you.’ I let him do the end-of-the-season tournament and he ended up taking second place.”
Another young wrestler came up to Tye after the season and told him that he’d never made it through another sport, but that Tye’s leadership style and positivity had helped him stick it out for wrestling.
Those triumphant finishes are just some of the success that fuels Tye to continue to coach. Now at it more than a decade, the 1997 Ewing High School graduate has continued to foster the program through unprecedented growth in numbers and results.
“Stories like that are what keeps me coming back,” Tye said. “And seeing the kids who love the sport.”
Tye sounds like a proud parent when he talks about the Ewing rec program. When he took over the wrestling program, he had six wrestlers. This year, there were 60, 36 that were new to the program. It’s a 33 percent increase from the year before when they had 45 wrestlers.
At the year-end tournament, Ewing wrestlers won 14 gold medals with four winners repeating from a year ago, 11 silver medals and 11 bronze medals. Those achievements added up to a third-place team finish out of 18 teams in a year in which the league had an all-time high of over 600 wrestlers.
“One thing I like about wrestling is all those medals were medals that were earned,” Tye said. “We don’t give them participation medals. All those medals are kids that actually wrestled and earned them. That makes it awesome, especially with 600 wrestlers and 18 teams. We came in third. We were four points shy of taking second place.”
Ewing’s program has taken off since the COVID-19 pandemic. Numbers were in the low 30s before the pandemic and they have bounced back strong.
The program is open to children in first to eighth grade. Sign-ups come every year starting in September, and they wrestle December to March. This year the influx of interest forced a couple of good problems.
The rec wrestling program needed more space to accommodate them, so they used both Ewing High School and Fisher Middle School for their Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday practices. They also needed more coaches. Tye found eight coaches that were willing to work with the program. They work together to help match wrestlers by levels.
“I’m pretty good at putting them in the spots where they shine at,” Tye said. “All of our coaches have backgrounds in wrestling. We get the kids, we weigh them all before the season starts, before our first practice, and we know how their skill levels are just by watching. Then we pair them up that way.”
“Coach Imran (Huq) is the assistant coach and everyone else is volunteer coaches,” Tye said. “We are the main two people. I couldn’t do what I do best —which is to coach—without the other coaches in my corner.”
Ewing has a wide range of experience in the program. The program has youth joining from other sports as well as those that wrestle year-round.
“The kids that do multiple sports – football, soccer, baseball—I’ve gone and watched them,” Tye said. “I try to make a point of making sure they know I’m there and know I care about them. I go to their other sports to watch them play and I can see the wrestling helps them in the other programs they do.”
The increase in numbers helped each wrestler develop over the winter. The Ewing rec program was able to expose their wrestlers to a variety of styles.
“It exposes the other kids in the room to more partners,” Tye said. “Sometimes, for example, we had a kid who was an athletic kid, strong and athletic, never wrestled before but just because of his athleticism, he helped one of the guys out who’s been in the program longer but didn’t have a good partner. We paired them up and they both helped each other to do well at the end-of-the-season tournament. Having more kids around gives us an opportunity to pair them up with different kids and different looks.”
Each weekend, the Ewing wrestlers get a chance to test themselves against outside program competition. Ewing attends one meet per weekend on a Saturday or Sunday within the Delaware River league.
“What I like about the Delaware Valley league, the way they want the program to run is they want the kids to be 50-50,” Tye said. “They want 50 wins, 50 losses. That helps out a lot. Traveling and going to different schools gives the kids an opportunity to see different competition versus just staying in that little bubble we have around our surrounding area.
“Going to Pa., going to DelVal, going to Hunterdon Central gives us better competition. Mercer County has really good competition, but traveling like we do and seeing different schools helps us out tremendously.”
At the end of each season, the league tournament gives each wrestler a chance to gauge their growth. Tye is working with Ewing High School’s wrestling program to open up out-of-season opportunities for some to maintain and further develop their skills. It’s another way for him to explore ways to spread his passion for wrestling. He has been encouraged by the growth of Ewing Recreation Wrestling and its wrestlers.
“Our saying is team equals family,” Tye said. “When it comes to our program, I try to live by that. Me being the head coach, I could not do what I do for the program without the backing of the seven other coaches and the parents who volunteer their time for the program during the season.”
Members of the 2024 Ewing Rec Wrestling Team include Daniel Alsieux, Manny Ortiz, Tyler Ortiz, Mason Dunn, Fashion Reed, Austin Werner, Michael Varchetto, Aidan Knight, Lilia Policarpio, HowardMoore, Peter Durda, Matthew Vanderhoff, Lucas Furman, Lincoln Mellon, Kyle Chianese, Alexandero Rellana, Griffin Cruz, Makenzie Hill, Dominic Comito, Shiloh Henderson and Liam Jacques.,
