Close calls

The Patriots knew they had a pair of huge matches ahead of them against ranked opponents.

They just couldn’t get enough going against the Eagles, but managed to narrowly take down the Tigers.

The Jay County High School boys wrestling team hosted three teams for a double dual on Tuesday, falling to the Delta Eagles 49-18 but managed to eke out a 39-37 victory over the Yorktown Tigers. The Winchester Golden Falcons also attended but did not wrestle against the Patriots.

“Not bad,” said JCHS coach Eric Myers about how he felt post match. “We’re just young and inexperienced and like I told them, ‘We’re going to have some good days and we’re going to have some tougher days.’

“It could have been worse. We were able to pull out the Yorktown match. There were just a couple of spots in that Delta match where we just need to be a little bit tougher. I feel like we took a step back in our technique and I feel like that happens every season. You’d like for them to wrestle perfect all year long. You start off the year good, then you hit a point where … you take a step back in some of your technique and you need to reinforce some things and that’s where we are right now.”

With just three weight classes left, the Patriots (5-3) held a 33-27 lead over Yorktown. First up was the 126 contest, which pitted Cooper Glassford against Carter Greggory. The Jay County sophomore struck first, working his way around Greggory for a takedown in 23 seconds, but an escape and single-leg takedown put the Tiger up one point. Glassford would get one more escape before the end of the period to go into the second knotted up at 4-4.

Greggory chose to start down and managed to escape almost immediately, but 81 seconds passed before another score would happen as Glassford was awarded a point for a hand locking violation. He would get three more points on a single-leg takedown to enter the final period up 8-5.

Glassford started down in the third period and got the escape five seconds in. As the clock ticked away, the JCHS sophomore started to look for opportunities to attack to try and score more than just a decision. With less than 30 seconds left, the wrestlers went down to the mat with a shot from Glassford that Greggory countered. A secondary shot got Glassford the takedown with 19 seconds left that he was able to work for the pin with just five seconds remaining to put the Patriots up 39-27.

“In the back of my head I was thinking about the team state,” said Glassford, noting that the Patriots didn’t automatically qualify for the event this season and will need to be voted in. “Once I got that ankle pass and he turned his back I was like, ‘I’ve got to get this pin. This is going to help determine if we get to team state or not.’ Myers even talks to us about that and the difference between getting a pin and a major. … I knew it would be tough and to say the least I went out there, things were a little chippy at first, but I really fixed some things and ended up getting the fall.”

The pin mattered for Jay County as the Tigers took the final two matches with a Jayden Cline fall (3:08) over Alex Rivers in the 132 weight class and 15-4 major decision from No. 10 Sam Moiser over A.J. Heskett in the 138 contest, leaving Yorktown two points short.

Glassford flipped his result from the Delta match as he fell earlier in the day. JCHS had three more wrestlers – Griffin Byrum (113 weight class), Brice Coy (190) and Freddie Lingo (215) –flip to secure wins in the second match . (Byrum and Coy both fell to ranked opponents.)

Jason Landers, Jacob Robinson and Alan Ortiz all went perfect on the day for Jay County.

Landers took down Delta’s Brayden Swain with a 12-0 major decision in the 144 match and followed it up with a fall (3:39) over Izaiah Hudson in the 150 contest.

Ortiz quickly dispatched Caleb Thurston of Delta in the 285 weight class with a pin in 30 seconds. His match against Yorktown’s Wyatt Roach went the distance with the junior pulling off an 8-6 victory after narrowly countering a final shot from Roach with 10 seconds remaining.

“That’s a tough kid,” Myers said about Roach. “(Ortiz) had to beat him to get out of regional. Just a different style that Alan has to adjust to and he was able to pull off the win there. He hasn’t wrestled as many lighter heavyweights. Sometimes you get a guy who doesn’t move quite as well and other times it will be a lighter guy who will actually take some shots. Alan has to adjust there and figure out how to wrestle those two different matches.”

Jacob Robinson works for a single-leg takedown of Delta’s Zeke Witter in the 150-pound contest on Tuesday. Robinson, who went to Delta in middle school and knew Witter, pulled off an 8-6 decision, narrowly avoiding being taken down in the closing seconds of the match. (The Commercial Review/Andrew Balko)

 

Similar to Ortiz’s match with Yorktown, Robinson’s match with Delta came down to the buzzer. Through the first two periods, Robinson built a 6-2 lead on Zeke Witter, with a pair of single-leg takedowns. He only gave points on a pair of escapes but he did get a stalling warning.

In the third period, Robinson chose to start on the bottom and escaped after 25 seconds. Witter got around him near the 1:00 mark to get back into striking distance at 7-5. Five seconds later, he let go of Robinson to go for a tie with another takedown.

With 50 seconds left, Robinson got called for stalling again, cutting his lead to 8-6, meaning a takedown would lose the match for him. Witter nearly got the takedown, but play was stopped just short of it for a full Nelson with 24 seconds left. From there, Robinson was able to kill time and take the match.

“There was definitely a lot of nerves,” Robinson said. “I used to go to Delta in middle school and I knew that kid pretty well. There’s definitely a lot of tension between these two teams and nerves got to me. … Those are the times of the match where you just have to think about your team and really dig deep and not let go because that could change the outcome of the match.”

Freshman Caleb Sibray owned the only other victory on the day, picking off Lincoln Mann of Delta in the 165 weight class with a victory by fall in 1:12.

With the Allen County Athletic Conference duals coming up on Saturday, Myers will look for his team to clean up some of the controllables to avoid giving away free points.

“We’re still wrestling fairly physical and we’re somewhat aggressive,” Myers said. “We just wrestled with our head down on the mat a lot on bottom and we weren’t finishing periods real well. We were giving up escapes with 2-3 seconds left where we just need to hold on but we’re giving up that extra point there. That’s easy things we need to clean up. We just need to make sure our kids are aware of it.”