State dual wrestling tournament begins

By ROB HAMILTON

North­mor cruised past Fred­er­ick­town on Wednes­day to advance to the regional semi­fi­nals in the first ever OHSAA state dual meet tour­na­ment in wrestling.

The Knights, who were the top seed in their half of Divi­sion III’s Region 22, had a first round bye and then took on Fred­er­ick­town, who had edged John­stown 30–28.

The Fred­dies got off to a fast start in the meet, win­ning two of the first three weight classes to take an 11–4 lead, as Northmor’s Grif­fin Jenk­ins won by major deci­sion at 113 pounds to pro­vide his team’s early scoring.

How­ever, the Knights would not lose again in tak­ing a 57–11 win.

At 126 pounds, Sam Neer over­came hav­ing to take injury time to pin his oppo­nent — a win that sparked the Knights and their crowd, accord­ing to head coach Scott Carr.

“The crowd noticed Sam was banged up a bit and when he sucked it up and got the pin, the fans got moti­vated and it lit a fire under us.”

Over the rest of the meet, North­mor claimed five pins, two for­feits and a win by tech­ni­cal fall. Mitchell Whisler (132), Jamie Baldridge (145), Jacob Walker (152), Cody Ross (170) and Lane Fos­ter (182) all took pin­falls from the Freddies.

Jake Far­ley won by 21–5 tech­ni­cal fall at 138 pounds, while both Tyler Beck (195) and Adam Bar­rett (220) win via forfeit.

North­mor will com­pete at home for the semi­fi­nals this Wednes­day. In the open­ing round of matches, the top seeds will take on fifth-seeded North Union, while second-seeded North­ridge goes up against sixth-seeded Mount Gilead. The win­ners of those two matches will then chal­lenge each other to see who moves on to com­pete again next week.

In action from last week, Mount Gilead didn’t have to com­pete as their oppo­nent, Newark Catholic, with­drew from the event. Also with­draw­ing was Card­ing­ton, who would have faced Heath for the right to com­pete against Northridge.

Carr noted that one nice thing about the dual meet tour­na­ment is the focus on team com­pe­ti­tion. In the reg­u­lar post­sea­son, the empha­sis lies on get­ting indi­vid­ual through sec­tion­als and dis­tricts into the state meet. Here, the entire team advances as long as they keep win­ning, mean­ing that all mem­bers of the var­sity team are equally important.

“For sure — after every prac­tice and meet when we break the hud­dle, we say ‘team’,” he said. “It makes it more spe­cial when it’s not one kid, but 15 or 20.”

High­land Scots

High­land advanced to the regional semi­fi­nals of the Divi­sion II state dual meet tour­na­ment last Wednesday.

The Scots topped Shelby by a 61–16 mar­gin, col­lect­ing seven pins in the process.

Mike Stew­art (113), Lucas Kafka (126), Jake Lim­ings (138), David Fisher (160), Jeremy John­son (170), Zach Rowe (195) and Ed Kon­tul (285) all claimed wins via pinfall.

Jeff Shell won by major deci­sion at 182, while Dustin Baker took a deci­sion at 220. Also, both Trevor Meade (145) and Con­nor Price (152) picked up forfeits.

High­land will travel to Lex­ing­ton on Wednes­day. The third-seeded Scots will take on second-seeded River Val­ley with the win­ner mov­ing on to con­front either the top-seeded host school or fourth-seeded Buck­eye Valley.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.