If the end of a long championship drought is in your sights, why not make things a little interesting, just to make it a little sweeter?
Emporia High’s wrestling team needed to win the last match of Saturday night — Mark Kolmer’s 189-pound championship bout against Clay Center’s Joel Marrs — to claim its first championship at the Newton Tournament since 1998. Kolmer vs. Marrs was the day’s featured match, and Colby High had just surged ahead of Emporia with a championship-bout victory at 171 pounds. With a win by Kolmer, the Spartans would leave Newton as tournament champions for the first time in 11 years; if he lost, the streak of Newton losses would stand for another year.
And if that’s not enough excitement, why not just prolong the drama into the final seconds?
Kolmer was trailing 4-3 in the third period when Marrs was called for an illegal headlock, tying the match at 4-4 with about 30 seconds remaining. Then Kolmer executed an escape with about three seconds left to pull out a 5-4 victory, winning a championship for both himself and his team.
The Spartans finished with 194 points, narrowly beating out Colby’s 191.5 after holding a 17-point lead through Friday’s action. Lorenzo Serna won another title for the Spartans earlier Saturday at 285 pounds, taking a 3-1 decision over Wichita Northwest’s Trey Page, and Emporia had nine wrestlers place.
“I knew that (Kolmer’s) opponent was a very good wrestler — he was second in 4A, Mark was second in 5A last year,” EHS coach Greg Buckbee said. “I don’t think they’d ever met up before, at least not in high school, and so we didn’t really know what to expect. The young man’s a very good wrestler, and they both wrestled a great match.”
The 285-pound title match was another well-contested one. Serna and Page each earned escapes before Serna scored a third-period takedown to take the lead, then rode Page out to earn the championship.
“Lorenzo’s just wrestling with so much confidence right now, and just getting better all the time,” Buckbee said. “... He’s just gaining so much confidence in himself, and (he’s) very smart, very calculated, and doing a tremendous job.
“His opponent came out like a ball of fire, just comes charging at him and trying to get a big lead early, and Lorenzo just held his ground and kind of wore the kid down.”
Justin Rose, Sal Tovar and Tavo Dikin all came up short in championship matches on Saturday, earning second-place finishes. Kash Biddle of Arkansas City defeated Rose 6-3 in the 130-pound final, and Tyler Anderson of Clay Center earned a 12-6 decision over Tovar for the 135-pound crown. At 140 pounds, Wichita Heights three-time state champion Kendrick Maple — who defeated Tovar last weekend at the Derby Invitational — defeated Dikin on Saturday, securing a pin at the 2:17 mark.
“Justin had a slow start and tried to make a comeback there in the end, and just about had it, but just kind of ran out of time,” Buckbee said. “Once you get behind as a wrestler, they’re not going to do anything to get themselves in trouble, and that’s kind of what happened with Justin.
“Sal, he kind of did the same thing. In the first period, he gave up a takedown and back points and had to play catch-up the whole match. Against a good wrestler, that’s hard to do.”
Chase Sanchez was Emporia’s lone third-place finisher, pinning Wichita Heights’ Matt Reed at the 4:04 mark of the 145-pound third-place match to secure that spot. Zeb Peak earned a sixth-place finish in the 152-pound bracket, losing in the fifth-place match, and Bryce Dakin at 103 and Jared Dakin at 119 both ended their tournaments with wins in their respective seventh-place matches.
Emporia has had some wrestlers move up to new weight classes recently, including Rose, who moved from 125 pounds to 130 this week, and Sanchez, who moved from 130 to 145. Buckbee said moving up classes is something those wrestlers have had to make an adjustment to.
“We had a couple of wrestlers that were used to being a lot stronger and as big or bigger than some of their opponents,” he said, “and they found out this weekend that they’ve gotta use a little bit more technique, and it’s gonna take a little bit of getting used to.
“But I think we learned a lot this weekend. We improved from the week before, we got off bottom a lot better, we rode people a lot better on top. ... And I think once we get used to these weights, and wrestling at their weight, I think we’re gonna be that much better.”
Newton Tournament
Team scores
Emporia 194, Colby 191.50, Clay Center 172, Liberal 138, Wichita Heights 128.50, Derby 116, Bishop Carroll, 113.50, Gardner-Edgerton 104, Norton Community 92.50, Arkansas City 91, Wichita Northwest 88.50, Newton 80.50, Maize 74, Salina South 73.50, Manhattan High School 70, Campus 66.50, Mill Valley 61.50, Hutchinson 61, McPherson 45, Lawrence 44, Shawnee Mission West 41.50, Dodge City 36, Leavenworth 21, Wichita East 0.
Emporia place-match results
103 — 7th place: B. Dakin, EMP def. Vieyra, SS, 9-1 .
119 — 3rd place: J. Dakin, EMP, def. Smith, SS, inj. def.
130 — Championship: Biddle, AC, def. Rose, EMP, 6-3.
135 — Championship: Anderson, CC, def. Tovar, EMP, 12-6.
140 — Championship: Maple, WH, def. Dikin, EMP, fall 2:17.
145 — 3rd place: Sanchez, EMP, def. Reed, WH, fall 4:04.
152 — 5th place: Perez, NC, def. Peak, EMP, 11-4.
189 — Championship: Kolmer, EMP, def. Marrs, CC, 5-4.
285 — Championship: Serna, EMP, def. Page, WH, 3-1.