Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

The mats are gone, all but a very small number of fans remain and the Shawnee Mission East team is playing hackey sack in the middle of Koch Arena.

Wrestling at 6A is over, but was it exciting. Derby took a 13-point lead heading into the finals — after trailing by 49.5 on Friday — then Goddard won five straight titles. Tyler Caldwell, Ryan Houlden, Brent Fisher, Brandon Bonewell and Boaz Beard all won. It was the third titles for Caldwell and Beard.

That gave Goddard the lead for good, even though Derby’s Blake Long won at 189, the Panthers’ lone champ.

The team title wasn’t the only excitment. Heights won three titles — Daniel DeShazer, Kendric Maple and Chase Nelson. And Northwest ended the night with wins by Kyle Caylor and Brock Heithaus at 215 and 285.

Frankly, the Wichita area dominated, winning 11 of the 14 titles.
The only other winners were from Junction City, Dodge City and Blue Valley North.

The atmosphere was nice, helped by large crowds from Derby and Goddard.

There were only a few boring matches. Hey, when the heavyweight match is between two athletic guys, you know you’ve had a good day. It wasn’t a situation of two guys just standing around.

That’s all from Koch Arena. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

In 5A, Bishop Carroll won the title, as expected.  In 4A, Clay Center beat Andale.

Carroll had champs in Jordan and John Keller — I know their house is a lot happier than the last two years when only one won each time. Ark City’s Trison Graham got his fourth title, and Valley Center’s Cade Blair got a victory. Mitch Arnold and Tyler Rosenhamer also won for Carroll, but Kyle Detmer lost. That surprises me because this season, through regionals, he had pinned all his opponents.

Ark City’s Scott Elliott won his third title — he won two at Augusta. And Romero Cotton did as expected, winning his fourth.

In 4A, Andover Central had winners Jake Gentzler and Chris Watson.

Andale’s Sam Thoma and Trent Cox won, too. It was Cox’s second title.

In 3-2-1A, Smith Center won, while Phillipsburg and Beloit finished second and third. Ryan Patterson from Garden Plain won.

by joanna

Goddard has overtaken Derby in the team points, thanks to four straight wins in the title round. Tyler Caldwell got it started at 140, Ryan Houlden followed at 145, Brent Fisher at 152 and Brandon Bonewell broke a 3-3 stalemate and in the final seconds of the second period, pinned Derby’s Coty Reinhart.

The Goddard fans are extremely loud now. And rightfully so. This title must be theirs.

by joanna

The Goddard fans have come alive. They’ve been quiet because they haven’t had a wrestler yet, but here’s Mitchell Means, the defending champ at 135, facing Heights Chase Nelson, the 112 champ last year.

Nelson got a quick takedown and has given up two escapes.

The Derby fans are squarely behind Nelson. They need Means to lose to help their cause.

Heights athletic director Rick Wheeler just stood up and did a wrestling move. He’s about 50 feet from the mat. He’s an old wrestling guy.

Heights assistant Mike Church makes for good TV. The cameras are zoned in on him because he’s always yelling something. He just ran over here, smacked the press table and said, Oh my God, this is some exciting (stuff).

Nelson just won 5-2. That has made Derby extremely happy and it’s given Heights three champs — DeShazer, Maple and Nelson. Not bad.  3 for 3.

by joanna

Just saw one of the most impressive things today in the 130 pound match between Heights’ Kendric  Maple and Maize’s Tim Dunham. Maple has controlled the match, but Dunham has got the strongest legs.

Maple had Dunham down on his back, but Dunham worked them around the perimeter of the ring by pushing up with his legs, pulling his whole body — and Maple’s — off the mat nearly completely. It was like he was doing the worm, with a 130-pound muscle man on top of him trying to  hold him down with all his strength. No lie, that was amazing. To think of the power that must take.

Maple just won 15-2.

The other amazing bit of strength I saw was Derby’s heavyweight, Kyle Westmoreland, pick up Leavenworth’s Brett Johnston and throw him down. Wow. That’s a lot of weight.

Other winners are Blue Valley North’s Nathan McCormick at 125 and Jesse Barber from Dodge City.

by joanna

Heights freshman Daniel DeShazer is now only three state titles away from his brother, Tristan DeShazer, who won four titles at West.

DeShazer didn’t have many problems with Blue Valley North’s Zach Tanenbaum. He ends his season at 42-1.

There’s not a very good crowd here. Probably no different than is usually at 6A when it’s at the Kansas Coliseum, but it’s more obvious now because 5A fans aren’t here. Kirk Seminoff, my boss, said the bottom part of Koch seats 3,000. It’s nowhere near filled. Sure, there are some fans in the upper areas — SM East fans, Derby fans — but there’s a lot of empty spaces. Maybe 1500 are here.

Goddard’s got the most fans by far. They take up almost two full sections.

by joanna

There are some coaches who are looking pretty fly right now. Yep, I said it. These guys look handsome.

Now, don’t get me wrong, here my dear readers. This is merely an observation.  Hear me out.

I’ve watched these coaches for two days, and they’ve all been wearing jeans and some sort of shirt with some sort of school logo. It might be a T-shirt, but more likely it’s been  a polo shirt.

But here, 30 minutes before the championships, they’re all dressed up. Suits, sport coats, sweater vests and for sure a tie with dress pants.  Most are still in their school colors — Olathe East coaches have orange ties, Heights coaches are in black and red.

Derby coach Bill Ross is in a sport coat, but he’s still got jeans on. Turns out he forgot them, they weren’t on the hangar like he expected. But his wife is hooking him up. Yep, she’s going to the store — oh, there he goes up the stairs to get the pants she went to the store to buy. Now that’s a good coach’s wife.

And you know what surprised me even more? Goddard coach Brett Means is in a tie and blue button down shirt! I am shocked. He told me last year that he doesn’t dress up. Yet here he is. He smiled when I mentioned it (that’s two smiles in two days, congrats to me) and said, “Yeah, I’m looking handsome.” Yes you are coach.

But then it was back to business and he said “I told you it wasn’t over yet, didn’t I?” The 6A title is definitely not decided yet. It will be a fun road, though.

What’s up with this? It’s starting 18 minutes early. What’s up with this! I still have more to blog about.

All right, here’s Manhattan’s Jeff Vesta, who’s beaten this Junction City kid, Isaac Ruiz, four times this season. Ruiz has six losses. In his career, Vesta is 8-0 against Ruiz.

I’m sure we’ll have some delays tonight because TV is broadcasting this live. I hate TV timeouts, let’s let everything go as fast as possible. Then again, I’m selfish. Sorry.

Just talked to a woman from Manhattan — all their fans are behind me. She takes pictures of all the Manhattan activities. She’s got a picture, framed, that she was going to give to referee Mike Martinez, who retired at the Newton tournament. The picture is of his shoes in the middle of the mat. Very cool.

OK, TV is driving me nuts. They’re right in front of me. Dang it. But it’s worse when they do close-ups on the coaches. They are about six inches from their face.

Vesta almost lost here. He’s up 1-0, then Ruiz got away and nearly took him down. Uh-0h in sudden death overtime, Vesta just lost. Ruiz got control of him and he went crazy, jumping around. But wait, the refs are talking. What the heck.  Nope, it’s Ruiz’s title. Unbelievable. That’s Vesta’s first lost this season, and he was a state champ last year.

by joanna

This is for Derby because I had a request to list all the third-place winners for the Panthers. And since I aim to please, here you go:

Roger Windham, 103; Cody Shavlik, 125;  Colton Snook, 152, Alex Feldkamp, 171; Tyler Downs, 215; Kyle Westmoreland, 285

Other area third place winners are Campus’ Dalton Miller, 112, Wichita North’s Diamond Wilson, 119.

by joanna

6A wrestling is a little more than 2 hours away from the championships, by far my favorite part.

But this tournament certainly hasn’t been boring. What looked like a one-team race (Goddard) after last night has become a whole lot more interesting. Derby had 10 in the finals and third-place matches. In the third place matches, the Panthers won six of eight, vaulting them over Goddard and into first with 199 points to Goddard’s 186.

Goddard’s still the favorite, though, with seven in the finals. That’s a lot of points there. Derby needs to win its finals matches at 160 and 189 and needs some help. Will the Panthers get it? That we will have to see.

They’ve got the two outside mats picked up and just the one mat on the ground now. The championship stand is up. Hmmm, it looks a little banged up.

The TV cameras are in place now. Just met Manhattan coach Bob Gonzalez’s son whose a wrestler at Fort Hays. There are few coaches who will introduce you, the evil media, to their kids. But like I said yesterday, coach is different. He’s so darn nice.

by joanna

I’m pretty comfortable, knowledge-wise, with most sports. I know a pick-and-roll, a flea flicker, a slide (volleyball). You get my drift.

But wrestling, that’s a whole other thing. I know wrestling’s main words, such as pin (fall), takedown, escape. I even know how most of the scoring works. But there’s been some words, or rather, phrases, thrown around today and yesterday that I just don’t know about.

When I interviewed Heights’ Chase Nelson yesterday, he threw out the head-arm move. It’s not that I need to completely understand it, but I need to know how to spell it or write it. Chase said it needs a hyphen and it’s not head and arm.

Then there’s the other stuff like what I heard screamed from behind me earlier today — Get your head in the hole! (that one made me laugh) Wrist control. Elbow pass. Then from yesterday, the more the kid made was the whizzer. I’m sure you wrestling folks know, but I’m a little lost there.

The best thing about wrestling people, though, is they love their sport, so if you look a little clueless, they’ll fill you in willingly.

by joanna

I’m back at Koch Arena, trying to figure out the best way to cover this final day and trying to figure out what will be the best stories. It’s pure conjecture, though.

The fifth-place matches are just finishing up on one mat. Which means the other two mats have a few random young kids messing around. There’s quite a few wrestlers just chilling on one end, and about five guys are warming up — of course, with the hoodies on.

Oh, look at that, Maize coach Roy Oeser and Heights assistant Mike Church have made up from yesterday (check out yesterday’s post for their minor issue). Oeser even gave Church a bottle of water. Too funny. Ha! Church just told me that he’s going to hand a case of water to Oeser tonight.

The finals are on Kansas Now 22 at 6 tonight — finals start at 6:30 — but make sure to  check out this blog throughout the rest of the day. I’ll try to give you as much info as I can.

Before the fifth and sixth place matches started, Derby had cut into Goddard’s 50-point lead, cutting it to 181.5 to 180. Can it hold up? We’ll just have to see. It’s certainly possible. I’m going through all the finishes right now, but it looks like Derby’s got 10 in the finals and third-place matches. Of course,Goddard’s got 7 in the finals tonight.

It should be interesting.