The Clash 2011–Tournament Day 1

Today was our first day of competition and it was quite a roller coaster. We started with #1 Ranked St. Edward and didn’t wrestle particularly well. They were certainly a much better team than us, but we also wrestled poorly, perhaps overwhelmed by both the opponent and the stage. St. Ed beat us 65-6, with Zack Hernandez coming through for our only win.

St. Ed is a very solid team, top to bottom. They’re a physical team with extremely sound fundamentals, beating us with well executed, but fairly straightforward technique. They’ll be competing in the championship bracket tomorrow, along with Clovis (CA), Apple Valley (MN) and Brandon (FL) – it should be quite a war.

Our second match was very disappointing. We wrestled Hastings, a very good team from Minnesota, but wrestled even more poorly than against St. Ed. In several matches, we were wrestling well, then got in bad situations and gave up a pin. Mental errors, mostly, but also a reminder that we can never let up when wrestling a quality opponent. We lost to Hastings 45-23.

We challenged the boys to refocus and step up their intensity and in our final match of the day, against Arrowhead Union of Wisconsin, they really delivered. In spite of our two forfeits (120 and 220), we managed a 42-35 win that came down to the final matches. We were trailing 32-35 with two matches to go – freshmen Weston Kogachi (106) and Josh Rosen (114) – and both wrestlers stepped up big time. Weston dominated his opponent and finally secured a pin with only about 10 seconds left in the match. That gave us a 3 point lead going into the last match, and like Weston, Josh Rosen rose to the occasion and dominated his opponent 16-2.

More than the win, we’re happy we finished the day wrestling well. We were aggressive, cut down on our mistakes, and took advantage of our opponent’s mistakes. It was impressive how our freshmen really met their challenges head-on and several individuals are wrestling well. LJ, Bryan and Zack, who’s 3-0 with 3 pins, are having a very solid tournament so far.

Oh, and very important to our wrestlers – it snowed today.

Tomorrow, we’ll be in bracket 7 with Prior Lake (MN), Rapid City Central (SD), and Mitchell (SD). {updated — I had listed the wrong teams earlier}