After Darren de Jong won the 190-pound weight class at the Mercer County Tournament and Evan de Jong placed second at 157 pounds, High School North wrestling coach Bill Furlong suggested the possibility of Christine de Jong joining her brothers on the team.
“‘Imagine if we had you out for wrestling, we could have three de Jongs in finals next year,’” Furlong said. “She just laughed it off. I don’t know if there’s any hope there, but she’s very athletic like the both of them.”
Christine only considered her physical education teacher’s suggestion for a second.
“I feel like I’ve gotten too far into diving,” said Christine, who also does cheerleading for High School North.
The de Jongs are juniors at WW-P North. They are good athletes and good students and active citizens. And they are triplets.
“It’s a lot,” Darren said. “You always have somebody to talk to. There are a lot of goods that come with it, rarely any bads. It can sometimes be annoying, but I definitely think the goods outweigh the bads.”
The three share similar athleticism, determination and drive that have resulted in enormous development in wrestling and diving, and are active in their school and community.
The de Jong triplets also have their differences in athletics, school, hobbies and plans beyond high school. Though the trio isn’t particularly competitive among themselves, their differences are important to distinguish each other.
“We’re all pretty much supportive because we all do a bunch of different things,” said Evan. “All of us have pretty different hobbies. Darren and I got into wrestling, but we’re at different weights so it’s not that competitive between the two of us. I think it’s pretty much all support. All of us want to see each other do well.”
Evan does bullseye pistol shooting. He is currently ranked as expert, only one rank below the ultimate of distinguished expert. Darren also used to do bullseye pistol shooting, but now focuses instead on archery though he recently backed off from the competitions he used to attend regularly. Darren also enjoys fishing. Christine goes running on the side of her other athletic pursuits.
Their similarities are valuable too as they share in successes. All three are closing in on their Eagle Scout awards with each of their Eagle projects focused around the Plainsboro Preserve. Darren is building an archery range in the preserve for his project, and Evan’s project is providing sturdy target holders to augment the range. Adjacent to the range, Christine’s Eagle Scout project is building a new gate to a garden that she also is fixing up to protect its vegetables from hungry gophers.
When the three entered high school, they also picked up another selfless hobby. They work together to raise dogs for The Seeing Eye in Morristown. The dogs stay with them for a year to 18 months before they are returned to The Seeing Eye to finish their training. They have raised three dogs together so far.
“Obviously we’re very good working together,” said Evan, “but we definitely do want to do other things and work with people outside of just our family.”
The triplets have each shown significant improvements in their main sports. After cheerleading through the fall, Christine’s diving has taken off this winter. She is the WW-P North school record holder for girls in both the 6-dive and 11-dive formats used in high school competitions.
“It’s been a pleasure to watch Christine grow in the sport of diving for the past three years,” said first-year Knights diving coach Elisa Sautter, who has coached in New Jersey for 13 years and also coaches at Notre Dame. “She has grown to become not only a competitor, but also a teammate and supports her teammates on the high school and club teams.”
Christine qualified for her third straight state diving championships and rewrote the school record book again with an 11-dive total of 427.65 at the state qualifier at Montgomery High on Feb. 7. Last year, she scored 302.75 at the qualifier. She has a 6-dive high of 235.20, up from last year’s 212.50 record.
“Every time she gets out she gets better,” said Joe Costello, her club coach at Princeton Tiger Aquatics Club. “So it just keeps improving.”
Christine didn’t take up diving until she got to high school. She was forced to make a choice with her time, and she shifted from gymnastics, which the triplet’s mother had done through college.
“Once I started cheerleading and diving, I realized that it was quite a big commitment to continue doing all three sports,” Christine said. “So I decided to stop doing gymnastics and fully commit to diving and cheer on the side, so I could use what I learned in gymnastics in diving.”
Being a former gymnast helped, and Christine was able to make a quick transition thanks to that background. She was 14th at the state meet in her first year of diving. She moved into the top 10 last year, and this year is hoping to move up again in her newest sport.
“Obviously there are some crossovers,” Christine said. “It was a pretty big switch. You have to land on your head; in gymnastics you never do that. I picked it up pretty fast. I’ve been lucky to have a lot of coaches that have taught gymnasts before so it wasn’t too bad of a switch.”
Christine has taken on diving and its dangers. She suffered a cut from a fall onto the board in last year’s Mercer County Championships, and despite her protests to continue, the on-site trainer would not allow her to finish the competition. This year, she placed fourth at counties with a score of 218.45.
“She’s a fierce competitor,” Costello said. “She’s never satisfied, which is good because as a coach I’m never satisfied. If it’s a 9, I want a 10. That’s how she is, and I think that’s why we jive real well together. Nobody’s perfect, but she wants to be.”
Her brothers haven’t been able to make many of her meets, but sometimes after their workouts at Princeton University they will catch the end of her PTAC diving practices at Princeton’s DeNunzio Pool. Christine has been able to support her brothers on the mats.
“Christine does show up to pretty much most of our wrestling now that she can drive,” Darren said. “She even showed up to counties. That was pretty cool.”
Darren has enjoyed a breakout season for the Knights wrestling team while Evan has continued his own climb. Darren beat Noah Kassas of Princeton 12-9 in the semifinals after back-to-back pins, then dominated top-seeded Gavin Dwyer of Ewing, 12-1, in the finals.
“That was crazy,” Darren said. “That was a long day, 15 hours of wrestling. Going into it I had a pretty good record, but I’ve taught myself never let your head get too big, treat every opponent like they’re going to be really good. I did that going in there and I guess it all paid off. It was amazing. It was a great experience. It’s nothing I’ve ever accomplished before.”
Darren also won his 190-pound weight class at the Schalick-Cumberland Holiday Classic. Evan, too, won his weight class at the Schalick-Cumberland Holiday Classic. At the MCT, he placed second to Konrad Haugeto of Hopewell Valley at 157 pounds. He reached the finals with a tight 5-3 semifinal win after back-to-back pins.
“I thought it was a great experience,” Evan said. “Obviously I still have a little ways to go because I would like to be first on that podium next year. It was definitely a good experience. I went into counties having just come off a loss at Princeton which was a little demoralizing and demotivating. I kept my head up and I wrestled through it tough. Overall I’m happy with how I did.”
The brothers got their start in first grade when their dad put them in the Wolverines Wrestling rec program at Grover Middle School. They didn’t see success instantly but they continued to work at it.
“That fighting sport is always something I guess a dad wants to have their son do, so we stuck with it for years and years and years,” Darren said. “We weren’t really good, but it gave us the foundation to where we are now. We just followed that along and took that with us since we had the experience, why not in middle school and why not in high school? The wrestling team didn’t have anybody really good, and also a lot of the people we did Wolverines with still stuck with it and they’re on the team today and we’re good friends.”
They have seen remarkable growth in their high school careers. Evan was 28-6 with 23 wins by pin heading into this year’s District 17 wrestling tournament. It’s a far cry from his 5-11 mark as a freshman before jumping to 24-14 last year when he won a match at the district tournament.
“A big thing sticking with it was acknowledging that we were young,” Evan said. “Most kids as freshmen aren’t going to be on the varsity team and possibly wrestling seniors and juniors and upperclassmen. I personally think that was a big thing in having the mindset to keep going and thinking of next year as an opportunity to grow and become one of those bigger kids.”
Darren won 10 matches as a freshman, but three were from forfeit when teams couldn’t fill his weight class. Now teams sometimes forfeit out of fear. Last year, he was 11-11 in an injury-marred year, but this year he has put together a 31-3 record with 23 wins by pin.
“He’s never afraid to try anything,” Furlong said. “He’s really the kind of kid I want, the kind of kid that goes for it. He’s not afraid to fail, he’s not afraid to mess up, he’s not afraid to lose. He’s just trying to do the best he can to win. Sometimes I guess earlier in his wrestling career he did get caught in some stuff and you think if he’d just have played it a little safer he may have won. But now it’s paying off with such huge dividends because his confidence level and the fact that he’s non-stop going for things throughout the match.”
Darren and Evan’s styles are contrasts in many ways, the sort of differences that distinguish them from each other. But both have been successful.
“Evan is very calculating,” Furlong said. “He only takes something when it’s absolutely there. He takes a long time to figure out his opponent and try to do something. That’s kind of fun. With Darren, you never know what’s going to happen. His matches are often wild. With Evan, that’s not quite the case. They’ve been low scoring more, but he’s grown within that style and he’s having a really great season as well. In that way, they’re very different on the wrestling mat.”
A big key to their improvements is their commitment to getting stronger. It’s not uncommon to see the de Jongs in the weight room when WW-P North opens it up at lunch. And in the offseason they lift plenty, something that started when they were freshmen.
“We went to the gym with our dad quite a bit,” Evan said. “We never did anything too crazy, but it definitely sparked our interest in it. The following summer it really took off. We were going to the gym every day trying to get a lot stronger. I’d say it helps a lot for wrestling with both of us. I went from being not very good at wrestling as a freshman to having a really good record sophomore year. There was definitely a big improvement.”
Furlong explained: “They’re committed. They get enjoyment out of it. At no point does it seem like they’re working. It seems like they’re really having fun, and they’re doing the things that make you a better athlete.”
The de Jong triplets continue to improve each year, and as it might be expected, have big plans ahead. Christine is hoping to dive at the Division 1 college level and is interested in a job in healthcare. Evan is interested in pursuing college wrestling and plans to study physical therapy or engineering.
Darren is more set on majoring in engineering and wrestling at a lower or club level beyond WW-P North. The trio has engineered success in all their pursuits through high school, each knowing they always have their siblings’ support in whatever they do.
“Rarely is there any feeling of jealousy between any of us because no matter what, one of us is always going to do well,” Evan said. “There’s always support. I only hope the best for them, and I’d hope they’d do the same for me.”
Evan de Jong (left) and brother Darren both took gold in their weight classes at the Schalick-Cumberland Holiday Classic wrestling tournament in December.,
