Wrestlers open with win

A difficult match was expected with one of the top small-school wrestling teams in the state across the mat.
The Bulldogs won the opening match with a pin. But they didn’t take another contested match the rest of the night.
Tyler Leonard’s first-period pin of 2015 state qualifier Isaiah Michaels in the second match of the evening started a run of eight straight wins for the Jay County High School wrestling team, stopped only by a forfeit. The host Patriots rolled to the 60-12 victory over Centerville, ranked eighth in Class 1A by IndianaMat.com, with six of their wins coming by pin.
“We were kind of nervous about their lineup. They have a pretty strong lineup, but then they were missing a couple guys and we probably beat their best guy at 152,” said JCHS coach Eric Myers. “I thought we wrestled pretty well. To pin a returning state qualifier, you’ve got to be happy there. That’s a pretty big swing.”
Leonhard took the mat against Michaels after 13th-ranked Javon Phillips scored a third-period pin for Centerville (5-2) in the opening 145-pound match. He got an ankle pick early, but was unable to hold on and then sprawled out of Michaels’ attempt at a double leg takedown.
The JCHS junior then got a double underhook, and when Michaels tried for a throw Leonhard dropped his hips. Michaels ended up on his back, and Leonhard used a headlock to finish off the pin in just 41 seconds.
Leonhard, who had lost to Michaels by one point in a 2014-15 preseason tournament, said he was nervous about facing the tough opponent but focused on wrestling his match.
“I just tried to stay in good position and just hope for the best,” said Leonhard, “and the best happened I guess.”
The victory started a run for the Patriots (1-0), with Ivan Hemmelgarn finishing off Dylan Mull in 1 minute, 14 seconds, at 160 pounds. A pair of decisions — 7-4 for Levi Hummel over Conner Allen at 170 and 3-0 for Daniel Ostrowski over Chris Pritchett at 182 — and a forfeit pushed Jay County’s advantage to 24-6.
Returning state qualifier Andy Kohler bumped up two weight classes to 220 pounds, built a 7-0 lead with a couple of near falls and then finished off Nathan Bennett with a pin in 1:16. And the next two matches went by in a hurry, with Gaven Hare (HWT) and Ian Liette (106) scoring pins in 21 and 32 seconds respectively.
“When you’re at home especially, and that happens, you can just get on a roll,” said Centerville coach Mike Day of the Patriots’ flurry following the Leonhard pin. “And they’re good. They just got on a little bit of a roll, and we didn’t put up much of a fight there for a little bit.”
A forfeit at 113 finally broke the JCHS streak, but the Patriots went on to win the final four matches with Colton Compton (138) putting an exclamation point on the night by pinning Caleb Duncan in 59 seconds.
Other victories came from Kaimen Sanders (120) by a 7-0 score over A.J. Taylor and Dallas Dudelston (132) by a 10-3 final over Elijah Phillips. Though Phillips lost to Dudelston, Day was happy with the fight his sophomore put up in his first loss of the season.
“That wasn’t a big deal … at the end … but it’s a big deal to his psyche,” the coach said. “He knows that he can wrestle with these guys. And that shows all the other guys that they’ve just got to keep fighting.”
The match marked the first varsity wins for Ostrowski and Liette, both freshmen, while Kohler, a senior who is ranked fourth in the state at 182 pounds, and Hare remained undefeated.
“(Hare) is just a really athletic big guy. And he’s smart,” said Myers of the sophomore, who also won the season-opening Franklin Invitational. “He started wrestling in seventh grade, and I’m always amazed how mat savvy he is. He always knows what the score is and where he’s at on the mat and what he has to do. … He’s a really smart wrestler for the limited amount of time he’s been wrestling.”