State duals end for local teams

By ROB HAMILTON

The OHSAA state dual meet wrestling tour­na­ment came to an end for Mor­row County schools on Wednes­day, as High­land, North­mor and Mount Gilead were all elim­i­nated from com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the regional semi­fi­nal rounds.

Both North­mor and Mount Gilead were elim­i­nated by North­ridge in the Divi­sion III, Region 22 semi­fi­nals. In the first round, the Vikings beat Mount Gilead 64–13, while North­mor topped North Union by a 46–23 mar­gin. After­wards, North­ridge elim­i­nated the Knights by a 43–27 margin.

“North­ridge is good — we knew that com­ing in,” said Knight coach Scott Carr. “We thought it’d be a hard-fought bat­tle and they were bet­ter than us tonight. I told them they have a few hours to be dis­ap­pointed about not mov­ing on, but we have to re-focus for the league meet.”

In Northmor’s win over North Union, nine Knights had their arms raised by the ref­eree. Grif­fin Jenk­ins (113) and James Ross (120) got their team started with pins in the lower weight classes. Mitchell Whisler won at 132 by major deci­sion, while Jacob Far­ley took a deci­sion at 138.

The Knights then got pins by Jamie Baldridge (145) and Lane Fos­ter (170), a major deci­sion by Cody Ross (160) and a win by for­feit by Colin Vis­conti (152) to open up an insur­mount­able 40–12 lead. Tyler Beck fin­ished the North­mor scor­ing by pick­ing up a for­feit win at 220. Carr noted it was nice to get Vis­conti back in the line-up. A state qual­i­fier last year, the senior had missed much of Jan­u­ary recov­er­ing from a torn meniscus.

“It’s always good to see him back out there,” said Carr. “He’s a senior who’s done as much as he can and is a leader on the side­lines. He means more to us than wins and losses; that’s for sure.”

In the other first-round match from Wednes­day, North­ridge con­trolled the upper weights on their way to top­ping Mount Gilead. Thanks to a major deci­sion by Kyle Blan­ton at 120 pounds, a pin­fall by Luke Hutchin­son at 126 and a deci­sion win by Alex Blan­ton at 138, the Indi­ans only trailed 18–13 at that point. Unfor­tu­nately for Mount Gilead, the Vikings won the final eight matches to pull away for the win.

North­mor got off to a fast start against North­ridge, get­ting a pin from Dylan Jenk­ins at 106 pounds, fol­lowed by deci­sions by James Ross (120) and Sam Neer (126), to take a 12–6 lead. The Vikings would win the next two matches to go up 16–12 and never looked back, though.

Baldridge won by deci­sion at 145 to bring the Knights within one point, but North­ridge would win five of the final seven matches (one by for­feit) to pull away. Cody Ross (170) and Beck (195) both earned pins to pro­vide the remain­der of Northmor’s scoring.

High­land Scots

Com­pet­ing in the Divi­sion II, Region 14 action at Lex­ing­ton, High­land lost to River Val­ley by a 42–32 mar­gin. The Vikings would then get defeated by the host school, which moves on in the tournament.

River Val­ley won the match in the lower weights, as they took the first five con­tests before Jake Lim­ings won by tech­ni­cal fall at 138 pounds. After two more Viking wins, the Scots took five of the final six matches, but weren’t able to score enough points to make up that early deficit.

Jeremy John­son (170), Zach Rowe (195) and Dustin Baker (220) all picked up pins, while David Fisher (160) won by deci­sion and Ed Kon­tul (285) picked up a for­feit win.

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.