Patriot wrestlers earn second place

The Patriots left with three champions, but it wasn’t enough to take the meet as a whole.

The Jay County Junior High School wrestling team racked up 287 points to take second place at the Jay County Junior High Invite on Saturday.

Delta claimed the championship in five brackets to tally 416 points and run away with first place.

Caleb Sibray (18-1), Freddie Lingo (19-1) and George Plessinger (17-2) all topped their respective brackets.

Sibray and Lingo both received byes in the 170-pound and 190-pound brackets respectively, while Plessinger only had one opponent standing between him and the 285 championship.

Plessinger took down Delta’s Caleb Thurston by fall in only 48 seconds to claim the match.

After Lingo’s bye, the eighth-grader pinned two opponents in under a minute. He followed it up with a victory over Driver’s Isacc Spurlin (13-2) by fall in 1 minute, 25 seconds.

Sibray won the quarterfinal match by fall before two major decisions secured the crown. In the final, he beat Lincoln Mann (13-6) of Delta 9-0.

Jay County also had two second-place finishes, coming from Walter Campofiore (106 weight class) and Spencer Smitley (215).

Jay County Junior High School eighth-grader Conner McMellan begins to cradle Union City fifth-grader Mykal Bocanegra during the Jay County Junior High Invite on Saturday. McMellan pinned Bocanegra early in the 144-pound quarterfinal, but lost the next two matches to place fourth. (The Commercial Review/Andrew Balko)

 

Three qualify

MUNCIE — The Jay County Winter Swim team competed at the CARD/OAK Last Chance Meet at Muncie Central High School over the weekend, where three individuals and a relay punched their tickets to state.

Sophie Warvel, Ellie Wiggins, Carsyn Guggenbiller and Addisyn Champ combined to swim a 2 minutes, 12.61 seconds time in the 9-10-year-old 200-yard freestyle relay to punch their tickets to the state competition at IUPUI March 15-17.

Champ, Guggenbiller and Warvel also accomplished the feat on an individual level.

Along with being the high point winner, Champ qualified for state in two events with  times of 2:28.84 in the 200 freestyle and 36.55 in the 50 freestyle.

Guggenbiller’s times of 2:39.07 in the 200 freestyle and 2:58.87 in the 200 individual medley also passed the state standard.

Warvel earned berths in the 50 butterfly and 200 freestyle with times of 36.07 and 2:33.14 respectively.

Along with the state qualifiers, Jay County had 26 of its 38 swimmers qualify for the divisional meet from March 1 to 3 at Fishers High School.