Scots, Knights claim wrestling titles Saturday

By ROB HAMILTON

Thanks to plac­ing nine wrestlers in the top four at Saturday’s Mid-Ohio Ath­letic Con­fer­ence wrestling meet, includ­ing a quar­tet of cham­pi­ons, the host High­land Scots were able to not just win the Red Divi­sion, but also boast the over­all best score on Saturday.

High­land fin­ished with 159.5 points to out­dis­tance River Valley’s 140. Third-place North­mor tal­lied 135.5 points to earn the Blue Divi­sion title. Buck­eye Val­ley, Pleas­ant, Mount Gilead, North Union and Card­ing­ton rounded out the eight-team meet.

“We’ve never won the whole tour­na­ment,” said Scot head coach Adam Gilmore. “When these seniors were fresh­men, we won the Red, but were fourth over­all. It’s nice for the seniors to win the whole tournament.”

The Scots dom­i­nated in the upper weights, claim­ing four cham­pi­onships and a runner-up in the final six classes.

David Fisher started things out at 160 pounds by defeat­ing Tyler Bashaw of Mount Gilead 15–8 in the finals of that class. Jeremy John­son fol­lowed at 170, as he pinned Buck­eye Valley’s Ben Kid­well early in the third period.

After not com­pet­ing in the cham­pi­onship finals at 182 pounds, the Scots got a second-place fin­ish from Zach Rowe at 195 before get­ting back-to-back wins in the final classes.

Dustin Baker took first at 220 pounds with a second-period pin over North Union’s Bran­don Cox before Ed Kon­tul didn’t waste any time in pin­ning Cardington’s Crew Cochran 99 sec­onds into their match.

“We have a lot of seniors in the upper weights,” said Gilmore. “They came together in mid­dle school and coach Jeremy Ammons taught them a lot about wrestling. It paid off for them with a league title. You see a lot of groups of kids come as fresh­men and sopho­mores and then dis­solve, but we still have a nice group.”

Other than Rowe, the Scots had two other sec­ond place fin­ish­ers. At 113 pounds, Mike Stew­art took sec­ond to River Valley’s Ray­mond Raino, while Jake Lim­ings was runner-up to Mount Gilead’s Alex Blan­ton at 138.

Austin Lafever fin­ished fourth at 120 for High­land, while Trevor Meade took that same place at 145. Also, both Ais­lynn McLaugh­lin (106) and Austin Panyik (182) placed fifth.

“It was nice — the kids really are a team,” said Gilmore. “They’re pretty tight. They might be hard on each other, but are a team and it shows. It’s nice to see kids buy­ing into the sys­tem. They’re not afraid to work hard. It’s a team thing and not like 15 kids and a cou­ple individuals.”

While the Knights did pick up a team tro­phy for win­ning the Blue, head coach Scott Carr was hop­ing to place higher over­all in the meet.

“It’s always good to win your side of the league, but bet­ter to win it overall,” he said. “It’s weird to fin­ish third over­all and get a tro­phy — it’s kind of bittersweet.”

Two Knights claimed indi­vid­ual cham­pi­onships. At 145 pounds, Jamie Baldridge pinned Curt Fedoush of Buck­eye Val­ley in the sec­ond period. Then, at 195 pounds, Tyler Beck took the title by top­ping Highland’s Rowe.

Colin Vis­conti took sec­ond at 152 for the Knights, while Dylan Jenk­ins (106), Jacob Far­ley (138) and Lane Fos­ter (170) all fin­ished third.

Grif­fin Jenk­ins fin­ished fourth at 113 pounds, as did Mitchell Whisler at 132 and Kyle John­son at 182. James Ross (120) and Cody Ross (160) both placed fifth, while Sam Neer took sixth at 126.

In the past, teams have gone straight from the league meet to sec­tion­als the very next week­end. How­ever, with the OHSAA state dual meet tour­na­ment under­way, there will be an extra week before that meet hap­pens — some­thing Carr wel­comes, not just to get his team health­ier, but also to cor­rect some of the mis­takes he wit­nessed Saturday.

“For only eight teams, this was still real good com­pe­ti­tion with a few state qual­i­fiers in this room,” he said. “You can’t take too many for granted. We made some silly mis­takes, which hap­pens when you have a lot of fresh­men and sopho­mores in the line-up.”

Mount Gilead fin­ished with 94 points in the meet and claimed a pair of league champions.

Luke Hutchin­son won at 126 pounds, tak­ing a major deci­sion win over Cardington’s Adam Reed in the finals. Also, Alex Blan­ton pin­ning Highland’s Lim­ings in the finals. Bashaw also made the finals, but lost to Highland’s Fisher to claim sec­ond place.

Kyle Blan­ton (120) placed third in the meet; while Mike Mol­lo­han (220) and Con­nor Hill (285) both fin­ished fourth.

Tim Williamson was fifth at 132, as was Franklin Pop­pel at 195. Sixth place went to Andrew Evans (152), Josiah Schirtzinger (170) and Austin Jen­nings (182).

Card­ing­ton tal­lied 45.5 points, as the Pirates only had eight wrestlers com­pete in the meet.

Reed took sec­ond at 126 pounds, while Cochran also claimed runner-up at 285. Eric Collins placed third at 195, while both Jae­lyn Bal­lard (106) and Lane Wad­dell (132) fin­ished sixth.

Win­ning the two $1000 coaches’ schol­ar­ships for this year were Northmor’s Beck and River Valley’s Ben Crabtree.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.