By PEDRO VELAZCO
PERU — The best thing about standing on one of the four podium spots at the Peru Individual Wrestling Regional is that the season isn’t over. There’s another week of sweat and toil and pain for a shot to do some damage next week where the stakes are even bigger — the Fort Wayne Semistate.
Twenty seven area wrestlers are alive after Saturday’s regional, each with a chance next week. None have a better chance than the regional champs, like Taylor’s Kris Workman, who took the 125-pound title at Peru and carries a 39-1 record into next week’s action.
“He feels like he has something to prove,” Taylor coach Gary Kleinknight said. “Last year, he made the semistate and lost in the second round. We’re eager to go back and make amends for last year.
“He’s a lot better than he was last year. He spent a lot of time on the mat throughout the summer, and it’s paid off.”
Workman will be the only Titan at Fort Wayne, but he’ll have plenty of Mid-Indiana Conference company as six Eastern wrestlers, five each from Maconaquah and Peru, four from Western and three from Northwestern advanced from the regional. In addition, three Kokomo grapplers are moving on.
Seven were champions as Kokomo’s Dylan Green (215 pounds), Peru’s Shannon Garretson (103) and Dalton Sparks (145) Maconaquah’s Austin Waite (135) and Brenner Stage (140), and Western’s Trevor Buckalew (285) won regional titles. Green (44-0) and Waite (26-0) will take unbeaten records to Fort Wayne.
Kokomo
Joining Green in Fort Wayne are Tony Benedict, the runner-up at 112 pounds, and Bo Butler, the third-place finisher at 160.
“We’re excited,” Kokomo coach Ryan Wells said. “Tony and Dylan both, we expected to get out. Both wrestled really well. Tony had a good day, we knew him and [Huntington North’s Logan] Randle were going to be a really good match in the finals and it was. It was 2-2 after the third period. Tony ended up getting taken down and losing that match, but he was right there the whole time.
“Dylan obviously dominated all day. He had a close match there [in the championship] but he controlled the match and looked really good. Those guys did exactly what we expected them to. We’re not even close to being done with those guys yet. We’ll keep looking to advance and make it to Conseco with those guys.”
Green beat Huntington’s Alexander Evans 3-2 in the final.
Butler was a pleasant surprise. He took a 21-20 record into the regional but beat Maconaquah’s Justin Hunt in the opening round to secure advancement, then took the third-place match.
“He’s really turned it on here,” Wells said of Butler. “Having a .500 record and turning it on and getting third place — it’s a good confidence booster for him. He’s going to get to see what the semistate is like. It’s a good experience for him as a sophomore to see that.”
Maconaquah
Maconaquah’s strength in the middle weights yielded great results as wrestlers in four consecutive weight classes reached the semistate. Besides Waite and Stage (40-4), William Page (145 pounds) and Brian Dick (152) both took fourth. In addition, 189-pounder Josh Morgan was second.
“Those four working together really pushed each other,” Mac coach Bob Freije said. He was particularly impressed with Stage, who was second last week at the Peru Sectional.
“That was a big win for him being a sectional runner up last week and being a regional champ,” Freije said.
Western
Buckalew (18-7) provided the meet’s final highlight with a pin of previously unbeaten Northwestern heavyweight Evan Floyd in the title match. He’ll have three Western teammates with him in Fort Wayne as Drew Britten (fourth at 112), Austin Shepherd (third, 135), and Logun Taylor (third, 145) all advanced.
“I’m tickled to death because my team wrestled well,” Western coach Chad Shepherd said. He noted strong outings from Jake Wiechmann at 160 and Briar Shoffner at 189, both alternates in the field.
“Two alternates come and wrestle and both are in a position to win. They didn’t get it done, but they’re sophomores,” Chad Shepherd said. “I think we wrestled good. There’s a couple matches that didn’t turn out like we wanted, but we wrestled hard.”
Northwestern
Northwestern advanced three wrestlers as Floyd carries a superb 36-1 record to Fort Wayne after his runner-up finish. Also, Matt Miller was third at 119 and Jesse Goodnight was second at 135, losing a heartbreaker 5-4 to Waite on a last-second escape by the champion after Goodnight tied the match in the closing seconds with a reversal.
“We’re happy that we got three kids out,” NW coach Scott Miller said. “We have some work to do. We saw some things that we need to work on a little bit more.
“Matt and Evan had unexpected losses. I hope that will motivate them to be a little more focused this week and do the things that they need to do. It’ll make qualifying for state a lot harder. Sometimes things don’t happen the way they want them, but they have to step up to the challenge.”
Eastern
Eastern’s advancing crew includes Conner Young (third at 103 pounds), Blake Pence (second, 119), Zach Alexander (second, 125), John Horner (third, 130), Logan Hetzner-Stephens (fourth, 140) and Clayton Smith (third, 215).
“Quite frankly, I wasn’t impressed with our overall wrestling, but it’s still neat to take six kids,” Eastern coach Bob Jarrett said.
He noted that Alexander and Pence wrestled well but ran into superior wrestlers in the finals. However he expected better overall.
“It’s not that they didn’t finish [in placings] as well as I thought they would, but they didn’t wrestle as well as I thought they would,” Jarrett said.
Peru
In addition to champions Garretson (42-1) and Sparks (39-3), Peru advanced a runner up in Brandon Grey (171 pounds) and two fourth-place finishers, Braxton Simpson (119) and Dustin Reich (285).
“It wasn’t all bad. We thought we had a couple more guys that could make it, but we’ve wrestled a bunch in seven days,” Peru coach Andy Hobbs said. Peru won the sectional last week and was involved in team regional action on Wednesday. “Sectional was very emotional, physical, and then so was Wednesday. That’s a drain. They did all right all things considered. They worked hard, wrestled hard and all our losses were good, hard-fought matches.”
Among the highlights for Hobbs were Grey reaching the semistate in his first season as a varsity wrestler, and Sparks’ overcoming Huntington’s Brant Hiple in the championship. Sparks pinned all three of his opponents.
“Dalton had a real tight match with Hiple last week and [Saturday] he was able to shift gears,” Hobbs said. “We wanted to see that he could rev it up.”
