Hess wins sectional title (02/02/04)

PORTLAND — In some ways Jay County’s day at the 2004 wrestling sectional was better than the year before. In some ways it was worse.

The result remained essentially the same.

The Patriots’ Kurtis Hess picked up a sectional title at 135 pounds, but most of his teammates were knocked out of contention early as they placed seventh overall Saturday.

Jay County was eighth a year ago in the first year of the nine-team sectional, and scored one-half point higher this season with a total of 98. South Adams also moved up one spot to eighth with a total of 78 points.

“We didn’t advance as many guys as we would have liked,” said Jay County coach James Myers. “I think the week off (hurt us). I thought we wrestled a lot better in the last two rounds.”

The Bellmont Braves still dominated the sectional, but not to the extremes of the previous season. They took about half as many titles (five) as last season and won by about half as many points with a total of 269.

The Norwell Knights were second with 228 points, barely edging Adams Central’s 222.

As the top two teams, Bellmont and Norwell advance to the team regional at Muncie Central Wednesday at 6 p.m. The Braves will take on Delta sectional runner-up Winchester, while the Knights battle Delta sectional champion Yorktown.

The top four individuals in each weight class will return to Jay County for regional action Saturday at 9 a.m.

The best day for the Patriots clearly came from Hess, who gave them their first championship in the new sectional format.

The sophomore had a strategy going into his championship match against Adams Central’s Andy Myers and he stuck with it.

“I knew he was supposed to be good on bottom,” said Hess. “So, I felt really comfortable on my feet. A couple of times I took him down and just let him back up.”

Using that catch-and-release formula Hess dominated the first period. He scored a takedown in the first 20 seconds, and built an 8-3 lead with all of Myers’ point coming on allowed escapes.

Hess (30-6) easily got an escape to open the second period, quickly threw Myers to the mat and then finished him off. He scored the pin in 3-minutes, 13 seconds to take the sectional title.

“It was awesome,” he said. “I was ready to wrestle. I wrestled really well.”

Myers was not the lone pin victim for Hess on the day. He slammed shoulders to the mat all the way to the championship, finishing off Chase Adams of Southern Wells in the first round in 4:25, and topping Norwell’s Brandon Inskeep in 5:25.

“When he wrestles he just lets it go,” said James Myers of Hess, who entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed. “He’ll dominate kids like that all the time. It was kind of nice for him to do that here in front of all these people.

“I was really pleased with his performance. You couldn’t have asked for much more.”

Tyler Bash (HVY) and Bill Spahr (152) were the only other Patriots to make it past the quarterfinal round.

Bash took an 8-0 lead in the first round before pinning Jared McDonald of Bluffton in 4:00, and then held off Bellmont’s Darek Colclasure for a 6-5 victory. But, the finals did not go so well.

Top-seeded Josh Stetler of Adams Central wrestled Bash to a scoreless tie after one period. Stetler then scored the first and only takedown of the match 25 second into the second period and pinned Bash 10 seconds later.

Bash is now 31-7.

“We just have to get him creating angles — we have to get him wrestling his match,” said Myers. “In that first period he wasn’t doing anything we had worked on or he had done earlier in the day.”

Spahr (24-11) pinned Michael Flanagan of Southern Wells in 4:28 in the first round, but dropped out of the championship bracket with a loss to second-seeded Todd Noonan of South Adams. Spahr wrestled his way back by pinning Wes Simpson of Bluffton in a quick 1:29, and he captured third place with a 15-9 decision over Norwell’s Beau Bradtmiller.

Myers said his hopes are to get Hess, Bash and Spahr through the regional round and on to the semistate and beyond. The top three wrestlers in each weight class at the Jay County regional will advance to the New Haven semistate.

“We’ll just take it a match a time, and a week at a time,” said Myers. “Hopefully next week we’ll get a normal week of school and practice.”

Every other Jay County wrestler fell either in the quarterfinals (first round) or in the earlier “pig-tail” matches. Josh Thornburg (112), Trent Bash (140) and Justin Adams (145) all wrestled through the lower bracket to fifth-place finishes.

South Adams did not earn any sectional championships, but will be returning two wrestlers to the regional Saturday.

Noonan (152) had the best showing of any Starfire, pinning Josh Bowman of Union City in 3:37 before knocking off Spahr in the semifinals. Shane Burkhalter of Bellmont pinned him in the championship match in 1:34 to leave Noonan in second place.

Spencer Haworth (112) edged into the regional with his 9-7 overtime win over Thornburg. That victory put him into the consolation finals where he lost 8-1 to Bellmont’s Andy Cress to finish in fourth.

Scoring fifth-place finishes for South Adams were Christian Baer (125), Dustin Ehr (130) and Jesse Dudgeon (171).[[In-content Ad]]