WICHITA
By all accounts, Sal Tovar should not have wrestled on Saturday.
After nearly having his left shoulder dislocated in a loss to Turner’s Paulie Hansen on Friday in the second round of the State wrestling tournament, Tovar spent most of the rest of the day Friday with his arm in a sling.
It was doubtful whether the Emporia High sophomore would get to wrestle for a chance at a State placing on Saturday at the Kansas Coliseum.
“The trainer told me, ‘That thing (the shoulder) is awful loose, and if he’s not careful, it’s coming out,’” EHS coach Greg Buckbee said.
But Tovar tossed aside those concerns to turn in one of the more gutsy performances of the day. He won three grueling matches on Saturday in which he had to fight back from second-period deficits in all three bouts to advance to the third-place match before falling to Valley Center’s Jimmy Stults.
In the third-place bout, Tovar led 3-2 at the end of the second period before Stults tied it at 3 with an escape early in the third. With Tovar visibly favoring his shoulder, Stults scored on a takedown and then forced Tovar’s left shoulder into an awkward position above his head, and Tovar could never recover.
He went on to lose the match by a 5-3 decision to take fourth place in the 119-pound weight class.
Tovar, who had had to ice his left shoulder for 10 minutes after each match after barely having any feeling in it on Friday, refused to use his bum shoulder as an excuse.
“I just didn’t wrestle smart and didn’t wrestle to my capabilities,” he said. “I could have done better, but I’ll just have to wait until next year.”
Buckbee, however, was proud of the way Tovar defied the odds and fought through the pain to earn a placing at State.
“With a hurt shoulder, one that was sore all day long, he came through and did what he needed to do,” Buckbee said.
After a somewhat disappointing finish to the first day of action on Friday in which four Emporia wrestlers lost in the championship semifinals, the Spartans came away with six State placers overall — including two who won their consolation brackets to take third place — to finish fifth as a team.
In addition to Tovar’s fourth-place showing, James Sparks (215 pounds) and Josh Rodriguez (285 pounds) each closed out their tournaments with third-place finishes, while Justin Rose (112 pounds) came in fourth and Bryce Shaver (160 pounds) and Mark Kolmer (189 pounds) each placed sixth.
“Obviously, we didn’t finish like we would have liked to, and we’ve got some work to do in the offseason to prepare us for another 365 days from now,” Buckbee said, “but overall, we did some nice things.”
Sparks and Rodriguez, who each fell on Friday in the semifinals to the eventual State champions in their respective weight classes, bounced back with dominating performances on Saturday.
Sparks began Day 2 of the tournament with a 9-0 major decision victory over Gardner-Edgerton’s Keith Curtis and then followed that with a 12-7 decision over McPherson’s Alex Whitehill in the third-place bout.
As impressive as Sparks was, Rodriguez was even more so, as he earned both his victories on Saturday by first-period pins over Hays’ Blake Pruter (:28) and Harmon’s Nick Langford (:40).
Rodriguez and Langford had already battled once in the tournament, with Rodriguez taking a hard-fought 2-1 decision over Langford in the championship quarterfinals on Friday. Against Langford in the third-place match, it wasn’t even close, as Rodriguez got the overly aggressive Langford in a headlock just seconds into the match, and as quickly as it had started, the match was over.
Rodriguez ended the bout so quickly that his coach, Buckbee, didn’t get to the mat in time to see any of it, as he was finishing watching Kolmer’s fifth-place match.
“He (Langford) came out hard and strong, but he was there and he was leaning, so I decided to throw him right there,” Rodriguez said. “I’m real happy that I pinned him fast.”
Other Spartans who fell in consolation action before the placing matches on Saturday were Jared Dakin (103 pounds), Tavo Dikin (125 pounds), Zeb Peak (135 pounds) and Logan Gaskill (140 pounds). Taylor Lee was the only EHS State qualifier to not make it to second-day action, as he lost both matches on Friday.
The Spartans as a team finished with 96.5 points, seven points back of fourth-place Arkansas City. Saint Thomas Aquinas won the team title with 168 points.
Buckbee said his squad’s performance at State had its ups and downs, citing that the Spartans had no wrestlers advance to the championship rounds but still came away with six placers.
He said the future looked promising for his young team. Of the 11 Spartan State qualifiers, nine are back next year, with only one, Rodriguez, being a senior next season.
“There is a bright future there,” Buckbee said. “We had some good experiences and some bad experiences here (at State), but it was experience nonetheless. We’re excited about what we’ve got.”