Third time’s the charm for Beck at state

By ROB HAMILTON

The third time was the charm for Northmor’s Tyler Beck when he took the mat against North Baltimore’s Dal­ton Ish­mael at the Divi­sion III state meet.

And this time, the stakes were higher than they ever had been, as the two senior 195-pound wrestlers matched up in the state finals. As sopho­mores, they met in the con­so­la­tion rounds, where Beck was pinned in the sec­ond period; and as juniors, Ish­mael had taken a 12–2 major deci­sion in the cham­pi­onship quarterfinals.

Win­ning in this encounter wasn’t easy for Beck, who fin­ished his sea­son with a 50–1 record. Ish­mael, who entered the match as the Ohio record-holder for most pins in a career, held a 2–0 lead through two peri­ods and was up 3–0 early in the third.

In the process of win­ning the match in over­time, Beck had to endure sev­eral delays for blood time and injury, as Ish­mael suf­fered a per­sis­tent bloody nose and the North­mor wrestler was poked in the eye, as well as a fall off the ele­vated mats after com­plet­ing a late take­down to tie the score.

While the already-lengthy match was stopped for a cou­ple min­utes after that fall, Beck wasn’t injured.

“It was my back and shoul­der that hit the ground,” he said. “It prob­a­bly looked worse than it was. Maybe it was adren­a­line, but it wasn’t that painful.”

What meant more for Beck in that third period was the two take­downs he scored against Ish­mael. After a score­less first period, he fell behind 2–0 in the sec­ond after being turned for back points in the final seconds.

He then sur­ren­dered one point on an escape early in the third period to put him down by three with under two min­utes to go in regulation.

How­ever, he was able to get a pair of take­downs in that period (while only sur­ren­der­ing one escape) to tie the score at 4–4. Beck noted that Ishmael’s rep­u­ta­tion as a pin­ning machine may have worked in his favor in that period.

“The longer the match went, the more and more and knew I could do it,” he said. “I looked at that as he’s not used to going to the third period.”

Also of help was all the blood time his oppo­nent had to take. After suf­fer­ing a bloody nose, train­ers were unsuc­cess­ful in fully stop­ping the bleed­ing until over­time. With the phys­i­cal, gru­el­ing nature of the match, Beck was happy for those breaks, which also allowed him to talk strat­egy with his coaches.

“I got lucky with all the blood and injury time,” he said. “I knew I prob­a­bly couldn’t go that long straight.”

While head coach Scott Carr wasn’t wor­ried about his wrestler’s con­di­tion, he did feel the breaks were beneficial.

“I think it gave us a chance to col­lect our thoughts and explain things,” he said. “He’s a smart kid and has a 3.7 GPA.”

In over­time, Beck was able to shoot in on his oppo­nent and take him down near the out-of-bounds line. Even this moment had a good bit of sus­pense, as the ref­eree wasn’t able to sig­nal for the take­down until his sec­ond foot had landed in bounds a cou­ple sec­onds after the shot had been executed.

“This is what I’ve worked eight or more years for,” he said. “I couldn’t wish for a bet­ter ending.”

Giv­ing Beck moti­va­tion this year was all of Northmor’s pre­vi­ous state cham­pi­ons. Their cham­pi­onship brack­ets rest in the school’s wrestling room for all present wrestlers to see in prac­tice every day.

“It’s some­thing you see every day in the work­out room — you see those brack­ets,” he said.

That bat­tle of attri­tion against Ish­mael was prob­a­bly fit­ting, con­sid­er­ing how easy it was for Beck to reach the finals. In his first three matches, he won by major deci­sion, tech­ni­cal fall and pin, respectively.

He opened with a 10–1 win over Joe Dil­bert of Read­ing on Thursday.

“That’s exactly what you want for a first match,” he said. “It doesn’t always work like that, but I got lucky. All that match was was a good warm-up for tomor­row to get my head on straight.”

In his Fri­day quar­ter­fi­nal match, Beck dom­i­nated Bran­don Brenes of Water­loo on his way to tak­ing a 19–3 tech­ni­cal fall. Beck put his oppo­nent on his back five dif­fer­ent times to account for 12 of his points.

“It seemed like every­thing he was doing was some­thing we prac­ticed, so I took it,” he said. “I just try to stay offen­sive — when I try to get defen­sive, I lose to good guys.”

In the Fri­day evening ses­sion, Beck had another easy win, as he took on Mar­cus Smith of Carlisle, whom he pinned in the sec­ond period. Before­hand, he had recorded three take­downs and two back points, while only giv­ing up a pair of escapes.

“That’s about the best-case sce­nario right there,” he said. “My sprawls were work­ing good, so it just looked like I had an answer for all their shots, I guess.”

Even then, roughly 24 hours before his match with Ish­mael, Beck was look­ing for­ward to the match.

“I’ve got­ten closer every time I’ve wres­tled him,” he said. “I think it’s kind of meant for us to meet in the finals and that’s how it worked out.”

After win­ning, he became Northmor’s fourth state cham­pion, fol­low­ing C.B. Doll­away, Brian Baldridge and Tyler Heminger. As a coach, Carr has has five final­ists in five years of coach­ing and been able to coach in the state finals for four of those five years.

“It’s always nice to leave Mor­row County with a suit in hand and know you have a chance to put it on Sat­ur­day night,” he said.

And after Beck became the sec­ond Tyler to win state in three years from North­mor, fol­low­ing Heminger in 2011, Carr joked that that first name might become pretty pop­u­lar in the area among expec­tant parents.

“I don’t think we’ll have to tell them — I think they’ll do it on their own,” he said. “Tyler will be a pretty pop­u­lar name in Mor­row County.”

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