Emporia High wrestling coach Greg Buckbee saw some pretty surprising things from his athletes this past weekend at the Derby Invitational.
The problem was, most of those surprises were unwelcome.
The Spartans as a team finished in a tie for seventh place with Shawnee Heights with 101 points, and Buckbee seemed almost at a loss for words when it came to how his squad performed as a whole at the tournament.
“We made some silly mistakes,” Buckbee said, “and I don’t think we were prepared.”
Two glaring problems Buckbee pointed to were the Spartans’ lack of proper conditioning over the winter break and some costly errors in several matches in which EHS wrestlers actually held leads.
“We weren’t taking care of our weight very well over the break, and several guys had to lose several pounds in not much time, and that’s hard to do and still stay competitive,” the coach said. “Also, we were leading several matches, and did silly things. We tried to do some very low-percentage moves when we were ahead, and that cost us some matches.
“When you’re ahead, you don’t do low-percentage things.”
Regardless of the problems, a few Emporia wrestlers did come away with some hardware.
Justin Rose advanced to the championship bout of the 119-pound weight class before falling to Bishop Carroll’s Jordan Keller, last year’s Class 5A State champion at 112 pounds.
Tavo Dikin finished third at 135 pounds, defeating Bishop Carroll’s Beau Hensen in the third-place match, while at 125 pounds, Sal Tovar finished fourth after losing to Aaron Hoag of Arkansas City in the match for third place.
Also placing for EHS were Chase Sanchez (sixth) at 130 pounds, Zeb Peak (fifth) at 140 pounds, Josh Rodriguez (sixth) at 215 pounds and Lorenzo Serna (sixth) at 285 pounds.
The tournament, which Buckbee called the “toughest Derby Tournament that I’ve been to in recent times,” did offer some valuable learning experiences for the Spartans, for both the athletes and coaches, Buckbee said.
“I think we learned a lot, which is good. The kids really learned a lot, and we as coaches learned some things as well,” he said. “You know, it’s early January, and as long as we’re learning and don’t make the same silly mistakes, we can live with it and move on.”