Wrestling's Ng Finishes Season at the NCAA Championships

As the nation stirred over college hoops and brackets, it was in St. Louis at the NCAA Wrestling Championships where another form of madness was going down.

Senior heavyweight David Ng was the lone member of the Crimson to qualify for the national tournament, after capturing 5th place at the EIWA conference championships two weeks prior.

Ng finished with a 1-2 record in St. Louis, falling in his first match to Stanford’s Nathan Butler by a score of 5-1. The loss led him to his first of two win-or-go-home pigtail matches, where the Massapequa, N.Y. native claimed a comeback victory against a familiar opponent in Columbia’s Garrett Ryan, 4-2. That win set up what would be Ng’s final match of the tournament, a 4-0 loss to conference rival Jacob Aiken-Phillips of Cornell.

“David will remember this for the rest of his life,” Crimson coach Jay Weiss said. “He fought, and he was our lone survivor with all the injuries we’ve had this season. He’s been a great wrestler for our team, and this experience is going to help him down the road.”

The senior began the tournament outside the round of 32, needing a victory against Stanford’s Nathan Butler to advance. Butler opened the scoring with an escape in the second period. Although Ng responded with an escape of his own to knot the score at one apiece in the third period, a near fall from Butler secured a late victory for the redshirt sophomore.

The bout marked Ng’s first appearance at the NCAA championships, after finishing seventh at the EIWA championships as a junior and eighth as a sophomore, just missing qualification both times. But the senior said that he was more excited than nervous heading into his first match.

“We work all year to get to this tournament,” Ng said. “It was a little unusual for me to not be anxious, but I was glad to be here and compete with the best in the country.”

The stars aligned in the first round of wrestlebacks for Ng to match up with Columbia’s Garrett Ryan.

The two wrestlers had met three times prior to their bout on Thursday. In their most recent matches, the Ivy League rivals split each bout, both ending in a score of 3-1.

Ng had previously secured qualification for the NCAA tournament by defeating Ryan, 2-0, in the fifth place match of the EIWA championships following a 3-1 loss to Ryan in the quarterfinal stage of the same tournament.

Indeed, the two wrestlers have gotten to know each other pretty well on the mat.

“I’m a smaller heavyweight, and I was able to force the match into a scramble,” Ng said. “I like to create a lot of movement, and the bigger guys have a tough time moving around so much, so I was able to maneuver my way in for a takedown.”

Although Ng trailed his Ancient Eight counterpart by one late in the third period, the senior picked up a point to tie the score at two by executing an escape. Then, with the clock winding down in the final period of regulation, Ng tallied two points from a takedown, locking up his first NCAA tournament victory.

The Ivy League pairings continued, as the senior’s triumph over Ryan led to a second round wrestleback matchup with Cornell’s Jacob Aiken-Phillips.

In Harvard’s regular season meeting with eventual EIWA team champion Cornell, Ng dominated Aiken-Phillips, earning a 6-1 win.

This time, the match would swing in Cornell’s favor. A close battle throughout, the bout remained scoreless until the third period. The Cornell senior broke the scoring drought by earning a point by escape and tallying two more shortly after with a takedown. Four points for Aiken-Phillips in the third sealed the victory for Cornell.

Ng’s swan song ended with a 21-13 season record, and the senior helped continue the 20-year streak of Harvard wrestling making an appearance at the NCAAs. His experience has provided him with valuable advice for younger teammates who will be the leaders of the wrestling squad in the coming years.

“Don’t wait until your senior year to become confident in yourself,” Ng said. “Physically, I’ve been almost the same since my freshman year, but I didn’t have that belief that I had in myself up until now. Don’t wait to be good.”