Four EHS wrestlers advance to Derby finals
By The Emporia Gazette (Contact)
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Friday’s first day of the Derby Invitational wrestling tournament showed Emporia High that the competition was just as fierce as it looked on paper.
“Oh, man,” EHS coach Greg Buckbee said Friday night, “(was) it ever. It’s very good competition. Probably just gonna get better tomorrow night.”
The Spartans, of course, are part of what makes the field so stacked, and they held their own on day one. They ended Friday night’s action in second place in the team standings with 137 points, 29 behind Goddard, the top-ranked team in Class 6A.
Four Spartans will compete in championship matches in today’s action after winning out on Friday: Sal Tovar at 135 pounds, Tavo Dikin at 140, Mark Kolmer at 189 and Lorenzo Serna at 285. Tovar will take on Wichita Heights’ Kendrick Maple in the 135 championship match today. Dikin will face Garden City’s Joey Dozier for the 140-pound title, Kolmer will go against Goddard’s Boaz Beard at 189, and Serna will face Bishop Carroll’s Tony Marquez.
Spartans who reached Friday’s semifinals before losing included Justin Rose at 125 pounds, Zeb Peak at 145, Logan Gaskill at 152 and Jordan Barr at 215.
Gaskill provided one of the Spartans’ big highlights of the day before losing to Goddard’s Ryan Holden in the semis. In the quarterfinals, Gaskill defeated Shawnee Heights’ Austin Willis — who had beaten him by one point in Emporia’s home dual in December — by a 14-6 major decision.
Rose fell to Valley Center’s Chase Nitcher in the 125 semifinals. Goddard’s Mitchell Means defeated Peak in the semis, and Josh Hicks of Goddard defeated Barr.
“And those (four) matches are the big difference in our team points right now,” Buckbee said.
He said all four EHS finalists will have a tremendous challenge in their championship matches, with Kolmer’s match against Beard and Tovar’s match against Maple providing probably the biggest challenges.
“And hopefully we get a lot more through the back door tomorrow and score some more team points,” Buckbee said.
Wichita Heights finished Friday in third place in the 17-team tourney with 104.5 points. Valley Center was fourth with 86 points, and host school Derby rounded out the top five with 83.
Overall, Buckbee was happy with the way the Spartans wrestled on Friday, even though the Spartans were sometimes wrestling from the bottom and not moving well underneath.
“That’s one area that we’ve been working on the last several years, and we kind of had a relapse,” he said.
Today’s action was to begin at 9 a.m., with the championship matches scheduled for the early evening.
“A lot of times, these tournaments are won on Saturday, coming through the back door,” Buckbee said. “And the wrestler and the teammates just gotta continue to compete and win those matches on the back side. We still have a great opportunity to score a lot of points tomorrow. So we’re not out of it yet.”