Emporia High wrestling coach Greg Buckbee believes the Rocky Welton Invitational in Garden City is the toughest tournament the Spartans have seen all season. The results from this weekend back that up.
Emporia improved on its first-day showing during Saturday’s second day of action, moving up from fourth place to end the tourney third out of 27 teams. The Spartans finished with 154 points, well behind Rio Rancho, N.M., which had 227 points, and Roosevelt, Colo., which had 206. The second-day improvement was something Buckbee liked, even as compared to previous tournaments in which the Spartans earned higher finishes. Emporia trailed Ponderosa, Colo., by 10 points after Friday, then ended up beating Ponderosa by 5 1/2 points.
“That was one of the positives that we (took) out of this, is that at Derby and Newton both, people caught up to us on Saturday, we kinda lost a little ground,” Buckbee said. “And out at Garden City, we actually caught another team and moved ahead.”
But just one Spartan left western Kansas with a title — Mark Kolmer, who defeated Roosevelt’s Nathan Heuer 1-0 in the 189-pound title bout. Lorenzo Serna also made the finals, losing to Andale’s D.J. Finney in the 285-pound championship match by a 2-1 count.
“Big, tall kid, man — he had a lot of leverage,” Buckbee said of Finney. “He was probably a head taller than Lorenzo. ... It was a good match.”
Four other Spartans earned placings. Sal Tovar finished third at 135 pounds, ending his weekend by beating Scott City’s Dillon Stuckey in the third-place match. Logan Gaskill lost in the 160-pound quarterfinals on Friday, then won out on the back side Saturday, taking four straight matches to earn third place. His final victory came over Phillip Merwin of La Junta, Colo.
Zeb Peak earned sixth place in what Buckbee called a “loaded bracket” at 152 pounds. Peak lost to Liberal’s Tyler Sutherland, the top-ranked grappler in the state in Class 5A. The Spartans’ final placer was Bryce Dakin, who finished fourth at 103 pounds. Roosevelt’s Kyle Walter defeated Dakin in the third-place bout.
Two of the Spartans’ stars, Justin Rose and Tavo Dikin, sat out the weekend — Rose was injured, Dikin ill — and their absences necessitated more of Emporia’s recent trend of lineup shifting. Buckbee joked that Chase Sanchez “might get the award this year for the most weight classes wrestled” after Sanchez moved yet again this weekend, wrestling at 140 pounds.
Considering the absences of Rose and Dikin, the coach was happy overall with how things turned out in Garden City.
“We were trying to slide in and move some people around and try to make the best team that we could to go out there with some of our senior captains out,” Buckbee said. “But to finish third in a tournament like that, with two of your best point-scorers and two of your best wrestlers (out), I felt pretty good about that.”
Facing adversity like EHS faced this weekend, Buckbee said, is nice at times, “because when you get to that state tournament, you just never know what’s gonna happen. Somebody gets hurt, somebody gets ill, if something happens, you just never know. ... We try to take anything negative and turn it into a positive, and that’s what we did this weekend.”
Tuesday night’s home dual against Shawnee Mission West and Shawnee Mission South brings senior night, and Buckbee said he wasn’t sure whether Rose and Dikin would be among those wrestling at their final home tournament.
“This is the last tuneup before we go into our postseason, with league, regionals and state, and I just don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s too early to say. We’ll evaluate those two on Monday, and maybe even Tuesday morning, and make a decision then.”
Rocky Welton Invitational
Friday and Saturday at Garden City
Team scores (Top 10)
Rio Rancho (N.M.) 227, Roosevelt (Colo.) 206, Emporia 154, Ponderosa (Colo.) 148.5, Scott City 135, Liberal 134, Andale 133.5, Alamosa (Colo.) 119.5, Canyon Randall (Texas) 116.5, Maize 99.