Three Knight wrestlers advance to state meet

By ROB HAMILTON

A trio of North­mor wrestlers will be mak­ing return trips to the Divi­sion III state wrestling meet this year.

Tyler Beck (195 pounds) advanced as a dis­trict cham­pion in action from the Divi­sion III dis­trict meet hosted by Philo High School, while both Jamie Baldridge (145) and Colin Vis­conti (152) earned third-place finishes.

The Knights fin­ished sev­enth in the dis­trict meet with 74 points. Amanda-Clearcreek’s total of 147.5 eas­ily won the meet, with Card­ing­ton sec­tional cham­pion North­ridge was sec­ond with 91.5 points. Among other local teams, Mount Gilead tied for 36th with 12 points, while Card­ing­ton was 41st with 10.5. A total of 54 teams scored at least one point in the meet.

Beck, who also has made the state meet the past two years and placed eighth in 2011, won by pin­fall in his first match before tak­ing a 10–3 deci­sion over Dan Jones of Colum­bus Acad­emy and a 10–8 deci­sion over Belpre’s Jamie Bar­rett to make the finals. Once there, he had a rematch of his sec­tional cham­pi­onship match with Heath’s Gun­ner Loughman.

For the sec­ond straight week, the Knight senior claimed a deci­sion over Lough­man — this time by a 6–3 deci­sion — and earned a dis­trict cham­pi­onship as a result.

Both Baldridge and Vis­conti had to recover from losses in the semi­fi­nals to advance to the state meet.

Baldridge, a 2011 state qual­i­fier, earned a deci­sion and pin­fall win in his first two matches before los­ing a 3–2 deci­sion to Shadyside’s Ian Baker.

In his go-to-state bout, he shut out Beallsville’s Bruce Sefert by a 4–0 mar­gin. Baldridge then topped Josh Wal­lace of Tus­carawas Val­ley by 9–1 major deci­sion to fin­ish third.

Vis­conti fol­lowed the same path to his sec­ond straight berth in the state meet. After win­ning a pair of matches by deci­sion, but lost 14–8 to Tegan McFad­den to fall into the con­so­la­tion round.

How­ever, once there, he pinned Nick Maffe of Bel­laire to advance to the state meet and then edged Caleb Horn of Amanda-Clearcreek by a 4–3 deci­sion to take third place.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.