Falls in the finals

The Patriots were already in command.

Up by more than 20 and with a half dozen wrestlers slated to take the mat in the finals, the championship was all but secured.

They took nothing for granted.

The Class 2A No. 4 Jay County High School wrestling team pinned its way through the finals Friday, racking up six individual titles and pulling away for a dominant 51-point victory in the East Central Indiana Classic.

“We challenge our guys to make sure they wrestle hard,” said JCHS coach Eric Myers, whose team won the ECIC for the third consecutive year. “Sometimes there’s a let up in that final round. … I felt like we went out and wrestled pretty hard. We were even down in a couple of situations and we came back and found a way to win. I was real proud of the way our guys wrestled there.”

The Patriots’ 224.5 points left them as the dominant team while the next four battled for second place. Columbus North (173.5) was the runner-up, followed by Class 1A No. 4 South Adams (169.5), Bluffton (167.5) and New Castle (164.5) in the field of 15 teams.

Jay County’s pins in the championship round were as follows:

106 — Griffin Byrum (21-3) over Charlie Fleshman of Central Noble in 2 minutes, 47 seconds

126 — Cody Rowles (18-6) over Jason Shuey of Central Noble in 3:08

138 — No. 3 Tony Wood (25-0) over Joseph Cloud of Central Noble in 40 seconds

150 — Jacob Robinson (20-4) over Zack Martin of Monroe Central in 5:19

190 — Juaquin Flores (20-5) over Nathan Shafer of New Castle in 2:39

215 — Bryce Wenk (24-0) over Luke Powers of Wes-Del in 1:37

Wood, who placed seventh in the state at 132 last year, was the king of the pin for Jay County as he kept his perfect record intact. He won all four of his matches with pins in the first period, needing a total of just 2:33 on the mat. In the finals, he got an early takedown and then used a cradle to finish off Cloud. 

Wenk notched an early takedown while falling out of bounds before finishing off Powers in the first period to stay perfect on the season. Like Wood, he pinned all four of his opponents on the way to his ECIC championship.

The two closest calls in the finals came from Rowles and Robinson. The former, a two-time state qualifier, trailed 4-0 early in the second period before converting a reversal into a headlock to flip the script of Shuey. The latter, a full-time varsity wrestler for the first time this year, saw a 6-2 lead slip away before catching Martin with a throw into a pin with 42 seconds remaining.

“A lot of good wrestlers today,” said Robinson. “The last match was definitely tough. But I just put in the work — staying in it and not giving up. …

“It’s just me wrestling me,” he added. “The majority of the time I’m making my own moves and just grabbing stuff and rolling.”

Flores built a 4-0 lead in the second period over Shafer and then used a cradle for his pin. Byrum, wrestling for the first time at 106 this season, was scoreless in the first period before starting the second on top, catching Fleshman in a cradle and recording the first of the finals pins.

“It feels pretty good,” said Byrum, who recorded three pins after getting a first-round forfeit. “I expected it. … I just find a pin … and make it work. …

“I just got more confident. As the match went on … I found my rhythm, got my pin.”

Other individual ECIC champions included five state-ranked wrestlers — No. 10 Levi Johns of Bluffton at 113, No. 2 Tylin Thrine of New Castle at 132, No. 8 Gavin Whitehead of New Castle at 144, No. 12 Asher Ratliff of Columbus North at 157 and No. 2 Juan Cruz of Bluffton at 285.

In addition to the six championships, the Patriots also got third-place finishes from 132-pounder A.J. Heskett (17-9), 144-pounder Taye Curtis (9-3) and heavyweight Alan Ortiz (11-4).