Bulldog wrestlers compete well

In our home tournament, we wrestled Hollister to start off. We wrestled pretty good against them. We were open in the lighter weights where they were full so we spotted quite a few points right there. We lost a couple of key match-ups against kids that we had beaten the weekend before. That kinda cost us the dual between us two. Final score was 30 to 45.

If we had a full lineup and got one of those matches to swing our way, we would have won the dual.

We also wrestled Springfield Catholic. We did a little better against Catholic. They didn’t have a lot of kids, but the ones they had were pretty solid, especially their 145. He was a previous state qualifier, a really tough wrestler. We ended up beating them 66-0.

Q. Who took on their state qualifier?

Dakota Long. And we pinned him.

We had some good matches in there. We wrestled really well against Catholic. They were just as strong as Hollister. We just didn’t wrestle well in the first one. I think part of that was being the first time at home for a lot of these kids. We have only had two home events in the history. I think we weren’t really mentally prepared at the git-go.

After that, we went to the Butler tournament. It wasn’t a great tournament for us. We had a bunch of kids that were battling flu bugs. We ended up finishing in the top 10 of 14 teams.

Next we went to Adrian and wrestled them and Summit Christian. We wrestled very well against Adrian. They beat us on open slots.

He bumped all of his kids up a weight class to do that. Once again, Dakota Long bumped off a state placer that was a 132 they bumped to 138 to wrestle Dakota. We ended up beating him 8-4.

My kids wrestled well on this one. In the winnable matches that we had, we took advantage of. The score was pretty deceiving – 26-42. I think we spotted them a bunch of points – 18 points.

We also wrestled Summit Christian. We wrestled very well against them. They have a very solid team this year. We put it all together well and beat them 36-30.

After that, we went to Butler and once again they kinda matched up bad with us with the opens. I don’t have lightweight kids. I’m open at 106, 113, 120, 126. They happened to fill a lot of those spots so they got a bump on me there.

We did wrestle pretty good though. The final score was 28-42. I really wasn’t unhappy with how we performed.

Then we went to the Buffalo tournament. It was a tough, tough tournament. Buffalo, the host team, has only lost one dual all year and that was to Willard. They brought in Rogers, AR, which is as solid as can be. We wrestled well. Kaleb Raff got sixth place. Ethan Dubois took third place. It’s deceiving because he was 4-1 on the day. The one loss knocked him out of contention of wrestling for first place. Keilan Jaques took fourth place. Dakota Long took third place. Dakota’s only loss was to a kid from Rogers, AR, that won the Fargo tournament. He was 44-1 on the season.

For the level of the tournament we had a pretty good showing.

We just wrestled Lone Jack at a quad on Monday. We wrestled well most of the night. We defeated Lone Jack 33-18. We only lost a couple of matches. One of them, I bumped some of my kids up a weight class. Keilan Jaques Wrestled a 220. He weighs about 186 lbs. He put up a good match but we didn’t come out on that one.

We wrestled Center which had a really full line-up. We probably won just as many matches as they did, but the score was 28-37.

Then, we wrestled Summit Christian again. We didn’t wrestle as well this time. We were a little beat up from Saturday still. We kinda ran out of gas. It was the last dual of the night. We lost that dual 21-30.

We had a few good matches in there. Blake Holder won a very tight match in double overtime. That’s always tough to do because you are exhausted. We had a few kids that went 3-0 on the night.

We have one more dual left before Districts. That is Cassville on Monday. Districts will be the 10th and 11th at Versailles.