By Garrett Cote
At surface level, the Manginelli household in Dumont, N.J., is perfectly peaceful. What looks compact and crowded from the outside holds a spacious – yet cozy – feeling. The kitchen is spotless, there is no trace of dust or dirt anywhere, and the first floor is practically submerged in silence aside from casual conversation between Giuseppe and Joann Manginelli.
Or, at least, that’s how the house is when Giuseppe and Joann’s twin sons are in “The Lab.”
Beneath the calm of the first floor is the storm – 500 square feet of pure chaos located just a flight of stairs below ground level. Not the chaos that couples confusion with disorder, no. But music blasting, weights moving ferociously and sweaty bodies letting out grunts as intense training takes place while athletes perfect their craft. That kind of chaos.
The kind of chaos that has shaped Joey and Gianni Manginelli into an exceptionally talented wrestling duo at Springfield College.
The two 21-year olds are, and were, inseparable. They do everything together. And it’s almost always competitively driven.
“We’re around each other 24/7,” Joey, who is eight minutes older, said. “We push each other to be better all the time. We want to be better than each other. Not in a selfish way, but in a way that we can both improve. If I’m walking with Gianni and he’s walking a little faster than I am, I’ll start to walk a little faster. It’s like a mental thing. We just don’t want to lose to each other.”
They can turn the most simple of everyday tasks into an unnecessary competition. That’s just who they are – according to their mother, Joann.
“A few months back they had a competition to see who was going to eat a sandwich faster,” she said. “And they recorded it. I don’t remember what they were doing it for, they just had to have a video of it.”
Joey won, devouring a ham, egg and cheese sandwich on a bagel.
Probably the most asked, highly-anticipated question they get is who would win if the two were to wrestle. The answer is simply that they refuse. Not only do they not wrestle each other, they won’t even drill together.
“We would be great drilling partners, but it would 100 percent escalate to more than wrestling,” Joey said.
When they did drill together, things ended badly because their approaches are so different.
“I’d hit him with a hard, heavy club, and he gets all pissed off just because it’s different being brothers,” Gianni said. “Joey is more methodical and technical, he’ll put you to sleep and then put the work on you.”
Gianni, on the other hand, is a self-described “rip your head off” kind of wrestler. “I don’t know if it’s because I lack technique, I just love the fight,” he said. “I love the nitty-gritty, hard hand fighting and heavy clubs.”
So they agreed it was best not to drill against one another. “We don’t want to have to go home and have to sit down and eat dinner together after we just beat the crap out of each other,” Gianni added.
Meeting the Mat
Joey and Gianni were destined to wrestle.
Their older brother, Dominick, who is now 29, was the first of the three Manginelli boys to get involved in wrestling. He, along with Springfield College wrestling alums Ian Tolotti and Mike Vietri, as well as Jarred Tolotti, a senior on the current Pride roster, helped jump-start Joey’s and Gianni’s wrestling careers.
The Tolotti and Vietri families also live in Dumont, and all three families are close. As young kids, Joey and Gianni had no choice but to hop on the wrestling mat since it was always around them.
“We kind of just fell into it,” Joey said. “My older brother had 100 wins in high school, and we were just always involved. We would go see all the high school matches, hang out with the wrestling team, and one day we just fell into the practice room. It was another way to hang out with friends.”
Results on the mat weren’t the primary – and probably not even the secondary – focus for the Manginelli twins growing up. In fact, the quicker they lost, the quicker they could rush to the concession stand to load up on as much candy as their parents’ money would allow.
“We used to go to tournaments and other matches, and we would lose in the matches and not care,” Gianni said. “Then we would ask our mom for money so we could buy candy and all that stuff. We were known as the ‘Skittle Boys’ on our team. We didn’t see wrestling as competition.”
After several years on the mat, neither Joey nor Gianni had any success. The losses continued to pile up, and they each had yet to make a scratch in the win column. But they loved the sport and everything that came with it – there were no doubts that wrestling needed to be a part of their future.
“I feel like what made it fun was more of going out and going to all these tournaments,” Joey said. “We were traveling at a young age, we went to national tournaments (with RedNose) and all kinds of state qualifiers. We weren’t seeing success, but we were with our family and friends. At that age we were clueless, I didn’t care if I got pinned in 10 seconds. I would walk off the mat with the biggest smile on my face and go get a bag of Skittles.”
When the twins were in fifth grade, Giuseppe spent hundreds of dollars for the two to wrestle the whole season at RedNose Wrestling School in Hackensack, N.J. After barely dragging through what was the hardest practice they had experienced up to that point in their early careers, Joey and Gianni wanted no part of the club.
They then began losing to the same handful of kids over the course of the next few years in rec league, and their competitive nature was jump started. They insisted Giuseppe give them another shot at RedNose in eighth grade.
“They finally decided that they wanted to go back to RedNose,” Giuseppe said. “And I said, ‘Okay, you sure? Because I don’t wanna be paying this money again, you screwed me last time.’ And they said they wanted to go, and then they started to realize they could do it and be good at it.”
Around the same time, Dumont High School was throwing away an old wrestling mat after their freshman year, so the Manginellis jumped at the opportunity and took a corner of it and squeezed it into their basement. And with that, “The Lab” was born.
From there they took off.
Gianni became Dumont High School’s all-time wins leader, wrapping up his career with a 145-23 record and placing eighth in the state his senior year at 126 pounds. He also was crowned the district champion that same season.
Joey, despite dealing with a handful of injuries throughout high school, including a broken jaw and torn labrum (more on that later), racked up three district championships – with the jaw injury holding him back from a potential fourth his junior year. He too eclipsed 100 wins, finishing with a 112-19 record at 120 pounds.
Both Joey and Gianni went undefeated in dual meets in their senior campaigns.
“It was awesome for our program to watch them grow,” said Dumont head coach Mike Rooney. “You definitely don’t see it in the moment. You reflect when they’re gone, and now you reflect on it and it’s like, those two kids are the cornerstones to our program and what we’ve been doing for the last several years now.”
The Muscle Hamsters hit Alden
Following Joey and Gianni’s first visit to Springfield College, it was a no-brainer they were going to be living on Alden Street for the next four years.
“When we came to Springfield, it was the Tolottis, Vietri and all their friends that kind of brought us in,” Gianni said. “We all meshed pretty well when we visited and from there it was a pretty easy decision.”
During their first year with the Pride, the twins turned heads right away. Joey went 20-3 and punched his ticket to the NCAA Championships in Iowa while earning All-American honors at 125 pounds.
As Joey wrapped up his final workout in Iowa just 12 hours before weigh-ins, he was more than ready for his first bout on the big stage. But then his mood shifted dramatically when he looked at his phone. Springfield head coach Jason Holder had texted him some gut-wrenching news.
“He said all winter sports were canceled for the rest of the year because of COVID,” Joey said.
He didn’t get a chance to redeem his ticket.
“I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it,’ Joey said. “And Holder said ‘Joey, I’m sorry to break it to you, but this is true.’”
Gianni didn’t have access to the starting lineup right away like Joey did. He had to battle for a spot in the 133-pound class, a class that consisted of All-American Chris Trelli (who now starts at 141), eventual 100-wins club member Jacques St. Jean and current 149-pound starter Chase Parrott – all of whom are tremendously skilled. Gianni still managed to go 30-5 in his first year.
“The practice room was crazy tough that year,” said longtime family friend Jarred Tolotti. “The fact that we had four kids all placing in the same weight class at most tournaments was crazy. I think everyone knew Gianni deserved a shot that year, and was honestly really close at the end. I think it made him work even harder. He just wants to be the best around.”
Using that first year as fuel, the twins took the COVID-canceled sophomore season to focus on the little things they wouldn’t have time for during a full season. They worked a lot on finishing takedowns in different positions as well as setting up attacks, which drastically improved their wrestling abilities.
“(The COVID year) was great, because it gave us an opportunity to practice in the college game without worrying about weight cutting,” Joey said. “All we had was a whole year just to get better at wrestling. We were practicing every day and lifting three times a week. We took some time to really sharpen the fine details of the sport.”
Toward the back end of their sophomore year, in April of 2021, Joey had surgery on his right shoulder to treat his torn labrum – an injury that had bothered him since his senior year of high school. Joey continued to work and rehab during the offseason and was ready to go by the time their junior year rolled around.
At the start of their junior season in November of 2021, a disoriented and troubled Gianni paced back and forth outside of the Doug Parker Wrestling Room, pleading on the phone with several different specialists. He tried to convince them that his right shoulder (the same injury Joey dealt with) didn’t hurt him that bad following the 2021 Ithaca Invitational – the first tournament of the year. But it did hurt him. His labrum was fully torn. However, he insisted they let him wrestle the rest of the season.
“The doctors were saying my labrum couldn’t get any worse, but it could begin to affect my rotator cuff, so that’s why some weren’t allowing me to wrestle,” Gianni said. “And that’s when I thought I was done for the season. Then I called another doctor in New Jersey, and he asked me if I felt pain. Obviously I’m going to say no. And then he cleared me.”
Competing the entire season with a torn right labrum, Gianni didn’t match the success he had his first year. But he still had one shot to flip his below-average (at least by his standards) season into a dream-come-true by earning a trip to Nationals at the Regional tournament at Springfield College.
He battled through day one.
During the first match of day two, he was told by the Springfield athletic trainers that he tore his LCL in his left knee. It still wasn’t enough to stop him. Even on a bum shoulder and a bum knee, Gianni managed to crawl his way into the third place match at Regionals – with a trip to Nationals on the line.
“He went out there and wrestled with all heart,” Giuseppe said of Gianni. “He went through a lot of pain. I saw a lot of matches where he was in tears. And he pushed through it. He was amazing.”
Before Gianni’s final match, Joey – who had also fought into the third-place match as well, at the 125-pound weight class – took to the mat. In front of a partisan Springfield College crowd, Joey clinched a spot in the national tournament for a second time after grinding out a 5-2 win over New England College’s Chris DeRosa. He waved his arms to pump up the fans and soaked in the moment.
“It’s always fun to accomplish something at home,” Joey said. “I had all my friends in the stands, I had the whole team behind me. It’s just different doing it in your own arena. I had a tough loss and then had to beat two very tough guys to take third, and I was just so happy. I wanted to win the whole thing, but I got the next best thing.”
Perhaps feeding off of Joey’s win, Gianni mustered up the strength to go out there one more time. He fell just short of joining his brother in Iowa (dropping a 5-4 heartbreaker to JWU’s Gabriel Leo-Esparolini), but it didn’t matter to his teammates, friends or family. The fact that he was able to show his determination and heart was most important. He left everything he had on the mat.
“You know what, I’m more proud of Gianni than I am of Joey,” Giuseppe said. Joann chimed in, “He was in so much pain, but it never stopped him. I couldn’t believe he was wrestling with the injuries that were bothering him.”
The twins share the same love for wrestling, the same competitive spirit, and, heck, they even share the same injuries. No matter the circumstance, Joey and Gianni genuinely do everything together.
“I think it’s very cool, because they will never see (how unique their relationship is) unless they hear it from someone else,” Rooney said. “There’s nothing like these two guys. They come home together, they live together, they go to school together, they work out together. Everything they do is together. I’m sure there are fights left and right, but their bond is special and it helps both of them in their own ways without them even realizing it.”
Regardless of those fights, Joey and Gianni certainly acknowledge each other as their main source of ambition.
“Gianni is my biggest motivator, for sure,” Joey said. “Even though we don’t wrestle together, we want to be better than the other. We motivate each other. Even if we don’t say anything, we could just be looking at each other. We may not acknowledge it, but we both know we are our biggest motivators.”
Aside from the intensity the Manginelli twins bring, there is a soft side to them as well. They are never afraid to show affection to their loving mother in any situation, even if it’s in public at tournaments.
“They’re never embarrassed to come up and hug and kiss us, whereas other kids may not do that,” Joann said. “And they still do it. I could be in the kitchen, and they would say, ‘Come on, mom, let’s dance.’ That’s almost every day.”
Although the “Muscle Hamsters,” as the Springfield wrestling team calls them, may not be able to wrestle together, something they can – and will – definitely do together is own a wrestling club and name it after their very own sacred basement, where they spent so much of their time developing the skills that have brought them this far.
Their goal is to own a wrestling club one day and call it “The Lab.”
“(Over the summer) I ask people to come over from Dumont and nearby towns,” Gianni said. “We try to help them, and I don’t charge them or anything. My goal right now is just to build a brand, build a name and just build good wrestlers so they can say that they trained in the Manginellis basement.”
“Me and Gianni wouldn’t be where we are right now without the people that came before us,” Joey said. “We feel like, for us, we have to give that back. We have the same passion and we have the same drive.
“It’s gotten us this far and we want to help others as well.”