St. Louis, Missouri -The Dexter Wrestling team traveled to Park Hills Central High School early Saturday morning to compete in the 13th Annual Central Invitational Dual meet. Though the travel distance is always a struggle for the team, the competition found at this tournament is well worth the effort for the Bearcat athletes to build their skills for post season action.
The Park Hills Tournament is a highly competitive twelve team tournament with many of the teams coming from St. Louis area. As a one-day, twelve team tournament, a unique tournament format is required to make certain that all matches can be completed.
To do this, the twelve high school wrestling teams that are divided up into four wrestling pools of three teams to make up the first round matches. These matches basically operate in a team style dual tournament format with the top two teams from each pool advancing to the second level of the tournament.
With eight teams remaining, the Bearcats were set to compete against Brentwood High School. The Bearcats defeated them by a score of 60-24 advancing to the next round against the Park Hill Central Rebels.
The Park Hills contest proved to be the most exciting dual of the day as the Bearcats only held a slight lead over Park Hills of 33 to 31. With only two matches remaining, freshman Storm Massey (120 lb) defeated Dillon Ball by an overtime score of 2-0 giving the Bearcats a 36-31 lead going into the final match.
The last match of the dual pitted Dexter's James Mullins and Central’s Jonathan Goheed in the 126 pound weight division. With time expiring in the match, Mullins found a third period flurry of moves to score a reversal with back points. Those points were just enough to give Mullins an 8-7 victory in his match but also secured the 39-31 team win for the Bearcats.
Poised for the finals against the Desoto Dragons, the Bearcats found the competition to be difficult dropping the dual to the Dragons by a score of 49-28. The loss gave the Bearcats a second place finish in the tournament for the second year in a row.
"Overall, it was a good day for the Bearcat wrestling program," noted Head Coach James Sneed.
Junior, Trevor Waldner has been dominate on the mat tallying up 5 wins on the day and moving his record this season to 26 -1. Trevor's only loss came in the prestigious Tiger Classic Tournament when he was defeated by a score of 13-4 by Tyler Rush of the Jackson Indians.
"Sophmores Jason Mattison and Dylan Bazarian had a great day today," added Sneed. "They were all 5-0 on the day, while freshman James Mullins was 4-0 but was unable to wrestle in the finals due to back spasms.
vs Festus Tigers:
The Bearcats had a great showing in the matches against the Festus Tigers. Of the 14 overall matches, the Bearcats were gifted 5 matches by forfeit accounting for over half of the team points. The Festus team was unable to fill these weight classes for the competition forfeiting to Bearcat's Ty Harmon (132), Jason Mattison (195), Keith Craft (285), Brandon Twomey (106) and Storm Massey (120).
Trevor Walder led off for the Bearcats and captured a pin over the Tigers Kade Stevenson in the 138# weight class. In the 145# weight class, freshman Ethan Stevens stepped in to pin Caleb Shepard at the 3:10 mark of his match.
These two wins were follow by Dylan Bazarian's impressive pin of Nathan Miller of Festus only 0:37 seconds into the first period of the 152 # weight division. Dexter's 128 pounder James Mullins pinned his opponent, Steven Williams in the second period and Steven Parks (113) was victorious pinning Toni Shephard only one minute into his match.
Bearcats won the dual against the Festus Tigers by a score of 60 to 24.
vs DeSoto Dragons:
The Bearcats found a much more stiff competitor in the DeSoto High School Dragons. The Bearcats lost to the Dragons by a score of 49 to 28.
Dylan Bazarian continued his winning ways as he pinned 152 pound Randy West of DeSoto in the first period. In the 195# weight class, Jason Mattison also won his second match of the day as he stuck Dominic Huskey very quickly at the 0:27 second mark of the first period.
Two other Bearcats, Logan Quertermous (182) and Storm Massey (120) raised their hand without a match as DeSoto forfeited these weight divisions.
The big match of the day was in the 138 pound weight division as Dexter's Trevor Waldner was pitted against DeSoto's Logan Ott. The match went to the full distance of three 2-minute periods. Waldner came out the winner defeating Ott in a tough battle by a score of 11-1.
NEXT MATCHES:
The Bearcats wrestling team will be back in action on January 15th as Dexter will host Anna/Jonesboro (IL) and Festus here at the Dexter High School gymnasium. Matches will begin at 5:00 PM.
The 'Cats Grapplers will remain busy as they prepare for the 2-day SEMO Conference Tournament on January 18th and 19th.
