Senior ascends to historic heights for school's wrestling program

Editor-In-Chief

For Michael S. Carbone, wrestling coach at Saint Joseph High School, Metuchen, senior Giovanni Alejandro’s path to the finals of the 138-pound weight class at New Jersey Sports Interscholastic Athletic Association State Championships was an “amazing accomplishment.” And although Gio, as Carbone called him in a telephone interview after the 1-0 defeat March 4 at Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, he became the first Falcons wrestler to reach the finals.

“The run you make between winning in the round of 32, then the round of 16, the quarterfinals, and the semifinals is a rush that cannot be explained,” Carbone said. “I have only had one other wrestler in my career make that run when I was at Woodbridge in 2017. At Woodbridge, it was only the second wrestler of all time in school history to make the finals and it still felt amazingly special, but at Saint Joe’s, with a program that is only fiveyears-old and never had a state finalist, it was an extremely special experience and moment.”

In addition to Alejandro, six other Falcons qualified for the state tournament: Vince Genna (157 pounds), round of 32; Evan Mendez (150), Tyler Whitford (144) and Brian Christie (190), round of 24; and Morgan Schwarz (126) and Jake Tulli (285), round of 16.

When asked what qualities are needed to succeed in wrestling and which ones Alejandro possesses, Carbone said he is a “very cerebral and smart athlete” and lauded his “toughness and competitiveness.”

“He has been described as a pit bull on the mat, which is a compliment for a wrestler because when they get between the lines and are ready for competition, you have to have no fear and wrestle your match as tough as possible,” Carbone said. “Gio has been able to do that for the last four years, but the first two years he was in high school his mind was writing checks his body could not cash.

“Come his junior year, when he grew more than seven inches in the offseason, his body finally was willing to meet his mentality and the jumps he made as a junior and senior were amazing.”

As a coach, Carbone said, one of their primary tasks is nurturing and helping wrestlers develop and improve. Once Alejandro became a junior, the coach’s goals and development started becoming more challenging to him physically and mentally.

“Gio is the type of person that responds well to that type of pressure and loves to be challenged, especially in wrestling, so his ascension to us was not surprising because we all saw how well he looked in the practice room,” Carbone said.

As part of their preparation for a match or tournament, Saint Joseph wrestlers compete against opponents that are scouted, but that is not always an option.

“We preach in our room that if we do what we do best we will have the best chance to win matches, but at the same point there are some wrestlers who are very talented out there and scouting does play a part,” Carbone said. “In the quarterfinals, we wrestled Wayne Rold from Camden Catholic who, the year before, Gio beat 4-0, but it was a highly competitive match so we went back and saw that film and also watched him down at the state tournament and made some adjustments. We felt we could score off his shots with our re-attacks and that is actually how we won in overtime 3-1 on our takedown.

“Then, in the semifinal, we ran into Joe Giordano, who last year in the regions we lost to 5-0. We felt his style had not changed very much so we made some adjustments on how we would wrestle him and Gio flipped the result from a 5-1 loss to a 5-0 win.

“In the state finals, we had a strategy of how to wrestle as well and Gio did a good job implementing it, but we fell 1-0 in the end.”

Carbone also noted how important faith is in the daily lives of his squad, in and out of the gym. it be your coaches, your school, yourself — faith can be a powerful thing,” Carbone said. “Gio has taken his faith and allowed it to make him a stronger person mentally and physically and because of that the growth he has shown throughout high school has been amazing. He has no fear when he is out there because he understands that his faith will carry him through the toughest times for better or worse.”

From left, Giovanni "Gio" Alejandro leaps into the arms of head coach Michael Carbone after a semifinal victory in the 138-pound division of the the State Wrestling Championships at Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City; Alejandro waits to start the championship match; and holds his second-place medal joined by assistant coaches Joe Liquori (left) and Allan Jordan (right); Bobby Jordan and Carbone.

Public welcome to attend free lecture on ethics

CALDWELL — Stephen M. Meawad, Caldwell University assistant professor of theology, will kick off the institution’s annual “Research and Creative Arts Day” at noon, April 26. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Meawad, author of “Beyond Virtue Ethics: A Contemporary Ethic of Ancient Spiritual Struggle,” will present on the process of researching and writing a book, and how research in the humanities compares with research in the sciences. A book signing will follow his talk. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Following the lecture, guests are invited to the showcase of undergraduate and graduate student and faculty research presentations in the Student Center gym on campus. Undergraduate students display their projects from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.; graduate students from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

As described by publisher Georgetown University Press, “Beyond Virtue Ethics: A Contemporary Ethic of Ancient Spiritual Struggles” offers a distinctive approach to virtue ethics, arguing not simply for the importance of “struggle” to virtue ethics, but that “struggle” itself is a manifestation of virtue. In doing this, Meawad offers a way of thinking about virtue not simply as a perfected state, but as a state that is to a greater or lesser degree a manifestation of the ideal itself, which is not attainable.

Meawad affirms the concept of the unity of virtues — that is, the idea that a virtue is not a virtue unless united with other perfected virtues — which is found in God.

Insofar as humans grow in unity with God, they too participate in the unity of virtues, although always to an imperfect extent. Meawad rejects a division between ethics and spirituality and provides two concrete examples of this suggested model. The first is the application of this model to the body and its implications for contemporary sexual ethics. The second is a reintegration of ethics and Scripture through the contemporary application of an ancient Patristic divine reading.