Brown wrestlers spent the weekend in New York battling out two late-season duels as the team looks to polish their performances before post-season championships begin. The Bears fell to a surging Columbia before putting together clean performances for a victory over Hofstra University.
Despite the final team scores in their defeat to Columbia, the Bears showed ferocity in taking advantage of the opportunity to battle nationally ranked wrestlers.
Wrestling at 141 pounds, Khimari Manns ’29, ranked No. 32 according to NCAA’s Feb. 12 Ratings Percentage Index, jolted expectations in an upset 13-11 win over Columbia’s No. 17 Lorenzo Frezza.
Manns aggressively kept Frezza on the backfoot, constantly looking to bulldoze through him using powerful double-leg takedowns. The high-scoring bout saw Manns put up a volume of attacks that made Frezza fail to launch his own offense. In just the first period, Manns attempted six shots and finished two.
Associate Head Coaching Chair Ty Walz described the win as a crucial individual victory during a duel in which Bruno was outmatched. The upset was “good timing” for Manns as the first-year looks to qualify for NCAA Nationals, Walz explained.
In one of the weekend’s bouts, an overtime takedown clinched the 4-1 sudden victory for No. 15 Andrew Reall ’28 over Columbia’s No. 27 Jack Wehmeyer. Reall fought off a deep high single-leg takedown attempt before using a front headlock to finish a double-leg takedown of his own.
In an interview with The Herald, Reall emphasized how the bout revealed areas of his game to polish, particularly shot defense.
“You don’t really want to have somebody in deep on your legs, especially multiple times when the score is 1-1,” he said. But “I feel comfortable when the score is close, because I just have faith in my preparation and my abilities,” he added.
Bruno’s other victory against the Lions came in the 174-pound class when Drew Clearie ’26 achieved a 13-3 win over Columbia’s Oliver Howard, putting points on the board for Brown. Clearie shut out his foe, finishing four takedowns and forcing Columbia on the defensive to avoid losing by technical fall.
Sunday’s duel with Hofstra found the Bears’ first team win since Jan. 16.
The heavyweights hit the mat in the first bout, with No. 14 Alex Semenenko ’26 earning the technical fall in the first period over Hofstra’s Adrian Sans at 18-3 in the 285-pound class. Semenenko’s dominance was clear in his win, with his extensive judo background on full display.
That momentum carried over for Bruno into the later bouts with Reall and Clearie gaining victories that put them both undefeated for the weekend.
A well-timed duck under by Ethan Mojena ’27 sealed his 5-1 victory against Hofstra’s Frank Volpe at 157 pounds. Mojena scrambled to a dominant position after taking advantage of Volpe’s forward pressure to time a takedown, forcing Volpe to belly out.
“Everybody’s wrestling hard, and I think we’ve made a lot of progress since the beginning of the year,” Semenenko told The Herald.
The team looks forward to the coming weekend’s final regular-season duels against Harvard and Sacred Heart University at the Pizzitola Sports Center, as they approach the postseason, which includes the Ivy League Wrestling Tournament.
“Winning an Ivy championship is a really big deal, and we have a handful of guys that can potentially do that this year,” Walz told The Herald. “That’s extremely exciting for this program.”
Chiupong Huang is a senior staff writer covering sports.
