BETHLEHEM, Pa. – No. 8 Lehigh will compete close to home this weekend. The Mountain Hawks will open the dual season Saturday against Duke and Virginia as part of Journeymen WrangleMania at Liberty High School.Lehigh will then head to Freedom High School on Sunday for the Journeymen Collegiate Classic annual round-robin event. Twenty-two Mountain Hawks opened the 2025-26 season at the Nov. 2 Princeton Open, with sophomore Matty Lopes (133) and junior Rylan Rogers (184) winning individual titles. Lopes was competing unattached.
On Saturday, Lehigh will face Duke at 1:30 p.m. and Virginia at 3:30 p.m. Both duals will be streamed on FloWrestling.org. Sunday’s Journeymen Collegiate Classic begins at 9 a.m. with streaming video also available on FloWrestling.
Lehigh officially opened its 2025-26 campaign with a contingent of 22 wrestlers at the Nov. 2 Princeton Open at Jadwin Gym. Sophomore Matty Lopes (133) and junior Rylan Rogers (184) won individual titles to lead the Mountain hawks, with Lopes competing unattached at the event. Lopes and Rogers were two of six top-six place winners for the Mountain hawks at the season-opening tournament. Lopes opened his tournament with a technical fall and posted two decisions to reach the finals against Army’s Ethan Berginc, who defeated Lopes twice last season. This time, Lopes used a first period takedown and third period reversal to claim a 5-4 victory. Rogers began his day with two technical fall victories,then defeated Lehigh teammate Jack Wilt 6-1 in the semifinals. In the finals, Rogers faced TJ McDonnell of Oregon State and won a 2-0 decision behind a second period ride out and third period escape. Sophomores Zeke Dubler (174) and Jared Schoppe (184) wrestled to third place finishes, while senior Jack Wilt (184) and graduate student JT Davis both finished in fourth place.
Eight Lehigh wrestlers appear in the latest rankings from InterMat, FloWrestling and Amateur Wrestling News. Five Mountain Hawks appear in The Open Mat’s rankings, while nine are rated in the top 33 by WrestleStat. Lehigh has five wrestlers ranked in the top five by both InterMat and FloWrestling, led by sophomores Ryan Crookham (133) and Luke stanich (141), who are ranked top three. Crookham, Sheldon Seymour, Max Brignola, JT Davis and Nathan Taylor are ranked across the board. InterMat, FloWrestling and WrestleStat rank from 1-33, while AWN and The Open Mat rank 1-20.
Graduate student Sheldon Seymour and senior Max Brignola both competed at the NWCA All-Star Classic,Nov. 1 at Rutgers’ Jersey Mike’s Arena. Seymour dropped a 4-0 decision to virginia Tech’s Eddie ventresca at 125, while Brignola dropped a tight 4-1 bout to Hunter garvin of Stanford at 165. Seymour and brignola are the first Mountain Hawks to compete at the annual exhibition since Connor