Local wrestling teams send many athletes to districts

By ROB HAMILTON

North­mor claimed two sec­tional cham­pi­ons and a total of six dis­trict qual­i­fiers in plac­ing sec­ond as a team at last weekend’s Card­ing­ton sec­tional meet.

The Knights fin­ished with 158 points to barely over­come Garaway’s total of 157.5 for the runner-up spot. North­ridge ran away with the team title, scor­ing 206.5 over Fri­day and Saturday.

North­mor put five wrestlers in the cham­pi­onship finals last Sat­ur­day after­noon, with two of them earn­ing first-place finishes.

Colin Vis­conti earned a title at 152 pounds by top­ping Centerburg’s Reed Hensel by a 5–3 mar­gin. Last year, on his way to qual­i­fy­ing for the state meet, the Knight senior also won first place at his sec­tional meet.

“It feels good because it’s my sec­ond one, but I have a lot more to do — mak­ing the state tour­na­ment and the podium,” he said.

Vis­conti won his first three matches by pin­fall before being taken the full six min­utes by Hensel. After miss­ing a large chunk of the sea­son after tear­ing his menis­cus, he is still work­ing to get to the level he feels he’ll need to be at in order to reach his goals.

“After surgery, recov­ery was a lot harder than I thought,” he said. “Mostly due to men­tal issues and not know­ing what would hap­pen. I worked hard and almost over­worked myself. I just have to keep push­ing for­ward because this isn’t going to take me to the state tournament.”

Senior team­mate Tyler Beck also picked up a sec­tional title, as he defeated Heath’s Gun­ner Lough­man by a 9–3 deci­sion in the finals. Pre­vi­ously, he had won his first three matches by pin while spend­ing less than two min­utes total on the mat.

“It was a con­fi­dence booster,” he said of his week­end per­for­mance, “but it still gave me stuff to work on.”

One thing he was pleased with was his work on his feet to get take­downs. In pre­vi­ous state tour­na­ment appear­ances, one thing Beck has men­tioned he needed to improve on was get­ting takedowns.

“That’s some­thing I’ve worked on all the way from the end of last year and it’s start­ing to pay off,” he said. “It’s some­thing to add that I was missing.”

Three other North­mor wrestlers took sec­ond place. At 126 pounds, Sam Neer upended his weight’s top seed in the semi­fi­nals, but fell to Cardington’s Adam Reed 9–4 in the finals.

Jamie Baldridge advanced to the finals at 145 pounds, but lost 6–3 to Northridge’s Thomas Williams — the sec­ond straight year he had run into Williams and suf­fered a defeat in the sec­tional finals.

Also, Cody Ross of North­mor advanced to the finals of the 160-pound weight class, but lost by pin to Rob Mickey of Northridge.

Grif­fith Jenk­ins also qual­i­fied for dis­tricts, as he took third at 113 pounds with a pin­fall win in his last match.

Brad Baker (106) and Kyle John­son (170) both fin­ished fifth for the Knights to become dis­trict alter­nates. Jacob Far­ley added one win at 138 pounds.

Card­ing­ton fin­ished ninth with 80.5 points. The Pirates advanced two wrestlers to the dis­trict meet, includ­ing cham­pion Adam Reed.

Reed, who deci­sioned Northmor’s Sam Neer in the finals, will be look­ing for his sec­ond trip to the state meet. He is hop­ing that advanc­ing as a sec­tional champ helps him, as last year, he made it after plac­ing sec­ond at this step.

“Last year, I went sec­ond, so I prob­a­bly had it harder than this year,” he said. He added that after hav­ing already mak­ing state last year, it also should help with hav­ing less pressure.

Also mov­ing on is junior Colton Jenk­ins, who took third at 170 pounds, pick­ing up four wins (three by pin) in the process.

Maken­zie Coul­ter placed fifth at 113 pounds to be dis­trict alter­nate, as did Eric Collins at 195 pounds. Crew Cochran took sixth at 220.

High­land Scots

High­land claimed a sec­tional cham­pi­onship at Lick­ing Val­ley on Sat­ur­day, fin­ish­ing with 182 points to place four in front of the host school.

At 113 pounds, Mike Stew­art earned an indi­vid­ual sec­tional title, as he pinned two oppo­nents to fin­ish first.

Dustin Baker placed first at 220 pounds, also pin­ning two oppo­nents on his way to the championship.

Three more Scots fin­ished sec­ond in their weight class, mak­ing it to the finals before suf­fer­ing their first loss of the tournament.

Jake Lim­ings fin­ished sec­ond at 138 pounds, as did Jeremy John­son at 170 and Zach Rowe at 182.

Lukas Kafka placed fourth at 126 pounds, as did David Fisher at 160 and Jeff Shell at 182.

While they didn’t qual­ify for dis­tricts, Trevor Meade won two matches at 145, while both James Croy (152) and Eddie Kon­tul (285) picked up one win.

Mount Gilead Indians

The Mount Gilead wrestlers took fifth at the Madi­son Plains sec­tional last weekend.

Scor­ing 105.5 points, the Indi­ans were able to boast five dis­trict qual­if­ers, includ­ing one cham­pion in Luke Hutchinson.

Hutchin­son won his four matches at 126 pounds in a vari­ety of ways, earn­ing a techi­cal fall, pin and major deci­sion before win­ning in the finals over Amanda-Clearcreek’s Nick Hoff­man by an 11–9 margin.

Alex Blan­ton took third place at 138 pounds with a four-win per­for­mance to make it to dis­tricts, as did a trio of fourth-place finishers.

Brock More­land moved on at 113 pounds, as did Kyle Blan­ton at 120 and Tyler Bashaw at 160 pounds.

Tim Williamson took fifth at 132 pounds to be dis­trict alter­nate, while Con­nor Hill placed sixth at 285. Also, Andrew Evans boasted a win at 152 pounds.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.