ITHACA, NY - Led by a second-place finish from Andy Roy (Wall, NJ), and supported by top four finishes from three others, the Rutgers wrestling team placed sixth at the 2003 EIWA Wrestling Championships, hosted by Cornell University. More importantly, RU will send four student-athletes – Greg Austin (Seaville, NJ), Amir Khan (Voorhees, NJ), Roy and Ryan McGrath (Blairstown, NJ) – to the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships in Kansas City, MO. RU has not sent four grapplers to Nationals since the 1964 season – a span of 39 years. The Scarlet Knights tallied 63.0 points, just 2.5 shy of fifth-place Harvard University. Lehigh repeated as the team champion, followed by Cornell in second place. The Mountain Hawks claimed five of the tournament’s 10 first-place finishes.

Roy opened second-day action with a 5-3 sudden victory over Penn’s Matt Herrington, ranked 12th nationally, to set up a championship finals meeting with Lehigh’s Brad Dillon. Dillon, ranked ninth nationally, knocked off Roy, 7-3, to end his title hopes. Roy finished 3-1 at the EIWA meet, including wins over Columbia’s Nick Carrier (10-1) and ESU’s John Carr (6-5) on the first day of action.

Khan, seeded seventh, gave Rutgers a huge lift with a third-place finish at 157. He opened the second day of competition with a 4-2, tiebreaker loss to Cornell’s Gabe Webster, but won two straight in wrestlebacks to end the tournament. He knocked off Navy’s Michael Carbonaro, 5-3, and beat Army’s Jeremy Connor, 3-2, in the third-place bout, his second win over Connor in as many days.

Greg Austin (Seaville, NJ) and McGrath placed fourth at 149 and 197, respectively. Austin, who beat 17th-ranked Erik Norgaard, 9-4, to close day one action, lost 15-0 to third-ranked Jesse Jantzen from Harvard in the semifinals. He then beat Brown’s Jason Mercado, 4-1, before falling to eighth-ranked Dustin Manotti, 11-5, in the consolation finals.

McGrath suffered a close, 2-1 loss to Matt Greenberg of Cornell in the semifinals, but rallied with a 9-4 win over Columbia’s Mike Gerstl to advance to the consolation finals. There, he suffered a 9-4 loss to Penn’s Paul Veleski.

Sophomore Rudy Medini (Colonia, NJ) lost his second round bout at 184 but fought back with a pair of wins in consolation action. He pinned Columbia’s Sven Hafemeister at the 2:06 mark and major decisioned Penn’s Ethan Bullock before dropping back-to-back matches to finish sixth. Frank Sabatino (Hazlet, NJ) also finished sixth at 285.

Complete brackets for each weight class and final team scores can be found at: http://cornellbigred.ocsn.com/sports/m-wrestl/spec-rel/03-eiwa-results.html