Wrestling: WH set to interview coaching candidates

Warren Hills appears to be close to hiring its next head wrestling coach.

Open Mike has learned Dave Sbriscia, a former wrestler for the Warren County school and an assistant on former Blue Streaks coach Jarrett Hosbach's staff, is among six candidates slated for interviews to be conducted on Thursday and Friday.

The others, according to multiple sources, are: longtime area coach Rick Thompson, along with former Delaware Valley and Voorhees assistant coach Steve Barkman, former PIAA state qualifier Josh Nordmark, a Stroudsburg High School alum and a science teacher at Warren Hills Middle School, as well as former Paramus coach and Wilson Area High School star Steve Klass.

The sixth member of this group, who has New Jersey ties, has yet to be identified.

"We will have a better grasp [of who the best candidate is] by the end of the week," said athletic director Geri McKelvey, who would neither confirm or deny whether any of the names above were on the scheduled interview list. The next Board of Education Meeting will be held on Tuesday, with another slated for Tuesday, April 24.

"By the end of April, we will have all of our [fall and winter] head coaches. Then they can pick their assistants."

Hosbach, who guided the Warren Hills program for the past 13 seasons, officially submitted his letter of resignation following the 85th State Championships in Atlantic City earlier this month. It was immediately speculated that Sbriscia would be a candidate to become the 81-year-old program's eighth head coach.

The advertisement seeking fall and winter coaches was posted on the school's web site on Feb. 28. McKelvey, who originally had no timetable to fill the head wrestling position, said on Tuesday that she felt it was necessary to expedite the hiring process in recent days with scheduling and offseason commitments hanging in the balance. Another factor limiting the candidate pool is the unknown with regards to potential teaching positions becoming open for the next school year, but McKelvey feels they will be scarce with the current budget.

"I don't want to hurt kids' opportunities," McKelvey said. "I don't want to make those decisions without the coach's input. Right now, there is no coach as a contact for the out of season [events]."

McKelvey outlined her criteria for hiring the next coach earlier this month.

"I'm looking for someone who will take control of the program, someone with managerial know-how, and will look out for the best interests of our kids," she said. "There are a lot of things, not just the knowledge of the sport."

The second-year AD also formed a committee to help with selecting the next coach.

"We have a lot of people with head coach-mentality on the panel," she said. "Whoever we hire has to have that mentality, and they'll know whether [that candidate] can handle it."

Sbriscia, a 2006 graduate and a three-year wrestler for Warren Hills, going 78-22 overall, won two district titles and was a two-time region placewinner -- winning a Hunterdon-Warren Tournament championship at 215 pounds in his senior season.

Thompson, 62, who stepped down after nine seasons as the head coach at Bangor Area High School in Pennsylvania following the 2016-17 campaign, also has made stops at Mountain High School (Orange, N.J.), Hackettstown, Franklin and Voorhees in addition to his three successful stints at Phillipsburg, where his teams went 268-59-1 overall and captured 15 sectional and seven state championships -- the most under any Stateliner coach.

Overall, Thompson, a Slippery Rock University graduate, is 471-231-4 -- going 124-81 in his most recent stint at Bangor. An accomplished wrestler, Thompson won two state titles (1971 and '73) and placed third ('70), while winning four district and three region championships for the Stateliners.

Barkman, who is involved with the Hunterdon Hills Wrestling Club, served on Dave Gaunt's staff at Del Val for two seasons in the mid-1990s. Barkman, a district champion at Hunterdon Central and an NCAA Division I qualifier at Indiana State, won a gold medal at 63 kilograms in Greco-Roman at the 2015 Veterans World Championships in Greece -- just the seventh U.S. wrestler to do so at the time.

Klass, a PIAA Class AA state runner-up at Wilson under legendary coach Dave Crowell, did a fine job in his nine seasons at Paramus where he led his teams to six sectional final appearances and the North 1, Group 3 title in 2015. The Spartans finished as the Group 3 runner-up in '15, and defeated Sparta, 29-24, in the sectional final. Klass, who still teaches at Paramus, is currently on Crowell's staff at Nazareth.

Hosbach's teams at Warren Hills finished 165-135 overall, including a 7-13 campaign this season. The Streaks advanced to the North 2, Group 3 sectional semifinals, dropping a 48-25 decision to champion Voorhees.