Team Ohio 6th finishes 3rd of 22 Teams at Columbus Day Duals- Spooky Nook, Manheim Pennsylvania Hosted by Tyrant Wrestling
By: Andrew Gasber
Another weekend of competition is in the books for the 6th-grade and 8th-grade Team Ohio Wrestling Squad. This weekend was absolutely action-packed with some of the absolute best club teams from around the entire country. There were 50 mats running at this tournament. The Battle at The Burgh was a large dual tournament however this Columbus Day Weekend Duals, was monstrous! Can you even imagine 50 mats running all at the same time? From Elementary level to high school, all at the same time! Absolutely incredible. Tyrant Wrestling truly does an incredible job at putting on these high-level dual tournaments.
As we expected coming into this weekend, our 6th-grade team finished within the top 3 yet again. Finishing 3rd place for the second event in a row. I am certain they wanted to come home with the championship trophy, however that is not how it worked out. They did however avenge a loss to a tough “Mat Assassins” Club that had beaten them prior in Wheeling. There were things to be worked on such as getting out from the bottom and finishing the matches strong. This was another great test for this young squad. There first day off the rip they were absolutely punishing the other teams. They dismantled an entire team 74-4! As the competition went on, however, it certainly got a little tougher as they kept winning. The team finished the first day undefeated and then moved on to day two. Leading the way for the weekend with pins for the 6th-grade team was Kyler Crooks, with 4 pins in a time total of 5:36. Quite an impressive effort put forth by Kyler this weekend! Way to go! Mikhail Montgomery, Trace Johnson, and Kyler Crooks were tied for the team points leaders with 36 points apiece. What an amazing job to have a three-way tie for the most team points. I had said in the preview that it was going to take a team effort to come away with some hardware, and it looks as if the team answered and really went out to score some points! Grady Phelps, Urijah Lopez, Dawson Wicker and Colin Bagdonas all ended up with 28/29 points for the squad. Way to follow up and support your teammates. Colin Bagdonas scored the most match points for the weekend with a total of 42 along with Urijah Lopez who also had 42! Finishing right behind them was Connor Bagdonas with 41 points! Mack Karmon had the fastest pin of the weekend with a super quick 9-second fall! Finishing right behind him for the second-fastest pin was, Isaac Brown with an 11-second pin! The team took some bumps on day two. PA Alliance Red ended up winning the dual against us by a score of 47-21 and then the next loss came directly after to POWA, by a score of 69-9. Clearly, still more work to be done but finishing 3rd overall is showing consistency, which is truly a great thing to see! Some of those teams that beat us in the end over the weekend were just stacked from head to toe. We will have their number next time, we will know what to work on, where to improve so that we can now avenge our losses to them! Great work this weekend and way to battle back and finish in 3rd place! You guys are still growing as a team and just imagine what you all are going to be doing come to the end of the year!
As for our 8th-grade Team Ohio, they finished in 9th out of 26 teams. They ran into some very tough competition. Losing their opening round to “Death Row” by a score of 56-18. Then in the second round, they lost a close dual to PA Alliance Blue by a score of 37-32! You don’t get too much closer than that. A couple of close matches that could have gone either way and then who knows, they could have possibly snuck that win out there. The third match was a solid win for the squad when they beat Triumph by a score of 44-30. After the win, though it was right back to another tough defeat to a Junior Terps Xpress team, the final score of that dual was 51-21. The fifth dual of the day was another win for the boys as they beat Olympia by a score of 61-17! They were able to put another win together to make it three total wins, after defeating Cimarron in a super close dual that finished 41-41 and came down to a tie-breaker! Team Ohio 8th grade won on criteria! This is where pins, takedowns, who scored first really comes into play. In the seventh round, however, the boys suffered another defeat to Mat Assassins by a score of 40-38. Literally 3 points shy of another big dual win! These duals were so toughly contested and our boys did such a great job of fighting until the very end. They just fell short a couple of too many times this weekend, ending them in 9th place as a team overall. Lincoln Rohr, Nathan Attisano, and Brandon Bickerton all finished with 2 pins for the weekend. Mason and Lincoln both were #1 and #2 for the fastest fall of the weekend, Mason with a 0:48 second fall and Lincoln with a 1:02. Not a bad way to compete with your brother for the weekend for the top portion for the fastest pin! Alex Taylor led the way for the most team points for the weekend, finishing with a total of 48 points! Way to score and rack up those points Alex! Brandon Bickerton finished in second for most total points with 35 and so did Nathan Attisano. Mason Rohr finished the weekend with the most total match points with a total of 76 points, the second was Brandon Bickerton with 71 points and third went to Nathan Attisano with 59 points.
