Seventh in state

INDIANAPOLIS — Set a new goal. Keep pushing. Keep fighting.

That mindset served Tony Wood well at the end of the day at the state finals.

The Jay County High School junior was in perhaps the most difficult of state finals situations. With his dream of wrestling for a state title gone after losing twice Saturday, he had to try to get refocused for a seventh-place match.

Wood was able to do it, bouncing back from his earlier setbacks to beat Warren Central’s Christian Arberry in the seventh-place match Saturday during the IHSAA Wrestling State Finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

“You have a goal. The goal was to win it,” said Wood. “But then you immediately have got to change your goal to getting the next thing. Then I lost again, but I’ve just got to get my mindset right and win that last match.”

“I always try to get the next best thing,” he added. “I’m just always trying to win the next match.”

Wood’s final win gave the Patriots the seventh-best 138-pound wrestler in the state for the second consecutive season. He followed classmate Cameron Clark, who placed seventh at 138 pounds at the 2022 state finals.

The weekend was a bit of a roller coaster for Wood (43-2), who guaranteed himself a state medal with a pin of 10th-ranked Max McGinley (35-10) of Cathedral in the opening round of the state finals Friday night. His shot at a state title disappeared Saturday morning with a 3-1 loss to ninth-ranked Reese Courtney (36-9) of Center Grove, who went on to finish as the state runner-up. He fell behind 5-0 in his consolation semifinal match against No. 6 Michael Major (28-1) of Carmel and was unable to complete a comeback in a 6-4 defeat. And then he rebounded to beat Arberry for seventh place.

“A lot of highs and lows,” Wood said, the 18th wrestling state medalist in school history. “A lot of tough matches. So you’ve got to reset yourself after every match.

“It’s definitely something that is going to help later in life because you’re going to have highs and lows. You’ve just got to keep going forward.”

Wood, who entered the tournament ranked fourth, set the tone for the seventh-place match against Arberry when he got a reversal just 11 seconds into the second period after a scoreless first. The stronger of the two wrestlers on the mat, he rode Arberry out for the remainder of the period.

Arberry then chose to go neutral to start the third period, but it was Wood who was able to take advantage. A takedown with 25 seconds left gave him his 4-0 final margin and one step up on the state podium.

“You’re happy to go out there and get a win at the end of the day,” said JCHS coach Eric Myers, whose team has now had at least one state medalist in seven of the last eight seasons. “No matter what, once you win that first match (Friday), you’re a state medalist. You just try and go out and place the best that you can.

“He does a good job with mental toughness and preparing. It’s really difficult when you’re at that level to move on from a defeat like that because you had goals to be in the finals, goals to win it. And then having to compete after you’ve had that disappointment is really difficult. And I felt like Tony did a good job getting back on track and getting mentally there.”

The quarterfinal match between Wood, who entered the state finals undefeated and ranked fourth in the state, and Courtney came down to the final minute as each wrestler got an escape following a scoreless first period. Courtney put the pressure on offensively and was able to work to a takedown with 29 seconds left on the clock.

“We were in some situations where I felt like we were in an advantage where I felt like maybe we could have a chance to score,” said Myers. “It just kind of felt like some coin-clip situations, and we lost one and that was the match.”

Wood wrestled to a scoreless one-minute first period with Major (28-1) in the consolation semifinal match and looked as if he was closing in on a takedown, only to have Major turn the tide to get one of his own at the 1:07 mark of the second period. Major then caught Wood in a cradle for a three-point near fall and a 5-0 lead. Wood closed the gap with a takedown 18 seconds into the final period but couldn’t work to a near fall, eventually releasing Major with 23 seconds to go. He got another takedown with two seconds left — too little, too late — in a 6-4 defeat.

Fellow Patriots Cody Rowles, Cameron Clark and Christian Wittkamp lost in the opening round of the state tournament Friday night. All four JCHS state qualifiers will return to the team next season.