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Accomplishments are starting to occur more often for Ned McGinley. Coaching in his 48th year at a university will certainly help expedite accolades.
The King’s College coach was recently recognized as the longest-tenured wrestling coach in all of Division I, II and III among all active coaches by Jason Bryant, President of the National Wrestling Media Association. Other current longtime mentors are Don Murray (47 years) of Division III Brockport State and Pat Pecora (41) at Division II Pitt-Johnstown.
“It’s a great accomplishment for the school. We started the program here. So that’s the biggest accomplishment,” said McGinley, who will take his young Monarch squad to the MAC Championships on Saturday at Messiah College in Grantham. “It means I’ve had an awful lot of good times. We’ve graduated 99 percent of the kids we’ve had here. So I definitely like that statistic. I feel like we’ve accomplished a lot here. And that’s a good way to live life.”
Recently, rumors about McGinley’s tenure coming to an end at the end of this season have started floating around the wrestling community. The longtime area wrestling icon didn’t dismiss the rumor, but didn’t confirm it either.
“It’s always there every year at the beginning, and at the end there’s a choice to be made,” he said. “Sometimes the choice is very easy because I didn’t think I had the right assistants. Sometimes I have had my thoughts. And certainly those thoughts will be there again this year.”
McGinley’s focus right now is getting his team ready for the stretch run of the season starting on Saturday. The Monarchs will be without two of their top wrestlers in heavyweight Ralph Bernardo and Zach Smith who are battling injuries. But they have bigger obstacles to overcome in a unique event.
The MAC only consists of five teams. Therefore every team can enter as many participants as they want. Not only is that a tough task to overcome, but King’s is the only one of the five not ranked in the D3Wrestle.com Top 25 rankings. Tournament host Messiah is ranked No. 2 in the country, while Delaware Valley, Lycoming and Wilkes are 11, 12 and 13 respectively.
“It’s a tough weekend,” McGinley said. “It’s a meatgrinder with the four teams who are ranked. They’re all high quality.”
King’s could be set up for a championship run in the near future with no seniors on the roster and several athletes with double-digit win totals this season. Bernardo, a junior, leads the way with a 14-2 mark, while fellow junior Howard Kilpatrick is 13-3. Tunkhannock grad Dakota Quick, a freshman has 11 wins, while Smith has 10 wins.
“I’d like to see them get in and place in the top six,” McGinley said. “I’d like to have a couple guys to coach in there. I think it’d be good.”
Wilkes, which took second at the tourney last year, will enter a slew of wrestlers as well, paced by returning MAC champion Jessie Lopez. Matthew Grossman (133 pounds), a 2015 MAC champion and NCAA Champion, will also wrestle for the Colonels. Guesseppe Rea, who along with Grossmann is ranked third in the country in their respective weights, will wrestle at 125.
Messiah is the returning team champion winning two of the last three tournament titles. In the 71 previous installments of the event, Delaware Valley and Lycoming have garnered the most team crowns with 15. Wilkes has 14 team tournament titles with its most recent coming in 1975. King’s has never won the MAC championship team trophy, but McGinley was part of very successful Wilkes teams that finished high in the event.
The 72nd MAC Championships will begin at 10:30 a.m. Saturday with live video coverage of the finals available at gomacsports.com.