Emporia High’s headlock on the No. 1 wrestling ranking in Class 5A is getting tighter. Three of Class 6A’s top five wrestling teams came to Emporia High for Saturday’s Emporia Winter Duals, and all three left as losers to the Spartans.
Emporia went 5-0 in Saturday’s duals, including a 49-21 win over Wichita Heights — 6A’s second-ranked team — a 56-18 whipping of No. 4 Junction City and a 33-22 win over third-ranked Derby to close the day. Six Spartans went a perfect 5-0 and earned spots on the All-Tournament team: Sal Tovar at 135 pounds, Chase Sanchez at 145, Zeb Peak at 152, Logan Gaskill at 160, Mark Kolmer at 189 and Lorenzo Serna at 285. It was an impressive show of success for a team that’s battled illness — Justin Rose sat out Saturday’s duals, and Tavo Dikin hadn’t been feeling well, either — and saw Jordan Barr overcome a grisly injury.
“The boys wrestled real well,” coach Greg Buckbee said. “We continue to get better every week, I think.”
Emporia’s day began with a 59-6 walloping of Centennial League foe Seaman, and in addition to the three victories over ranked 6A squads, the Spartans also beat Team X 72-0. The cryptically named Team X was a collection of junior varsity wrestlers from each school put together to fill out the dual schedule because a sixth team wasn’t invited this year.
Highlights of the win over Seaman included an 18-2 technical fall victory for Colby Walecki at 125 pounds, Tovar and Peak each winning 10-0 at 135 and 152 pounds, respectively, and pins for Logan Gaskill, Taylor Lee, Lorenzo Serna and Bryce Dakin. At 112 pounds, Drew Detwiler concluded the dual and got the crowd going by coming back from a 4-0 deficit in the second period to tie Bret Simmons at 4, then logging two near-falls to notch a 10-4 win.
The Spartans dismissed Junction with six pins and technical falls for Dikin and Dakin. Colby Walecki, Tovar and Serna all took less than a minute to pin their Blue Jay opponents, and Peak, Lee and Kolmer also scored falls.
Eight of the fourteen Emporia-Heights matches were decided by fall, one was won by default, and of the four decisions, only one was decided by less than four points. For the Spartans, Tovar, Peak, Lee, Serna and Dakin secured pins. Dikin lost to Heights’ Kendrick Maple — who Buckee said pound for pound might be the best in the state — for the second straight weekend. Dikin won the rest of his matches despite his illness giving him a painful sore throat.
But the day’s Rub Some Dirt on It Award for toughness, if it existed, would have gone to Jordan Barr. Barr dislocated his pinkie in his opening match at 215 pounds against Seaman’s Rick Singer — then got it popped back into place, returned to the match and won it 6-3.
“I actually didn’t feel any pain (at first),” Barr said. “It just kind of went numb, and all the cheerleaders were like, ‘ohhhhh,’ grossed out. I was like, ‘what?’ I looked at my pinkie and it’s shaped like a ‘Z.’ So then it starts hurting.”
Fortunately for Barr, he’s a veteran of “multiple surgeries and stitches and all sorts of other things,” and he toughed out the rest of the day. After defeating Singer, he lost his match to Junction City’s Greg Knudson, getting pinned at the 3:56 mark, but then won out to finish 4-1.
The most drama of the day for Emporia came in the Spartans’ final dual against Derby. Following Bradley Little’s pin of Tyler Trahoon at 130 pounds, the Spartans’ lead was down to 27-22 heading into the final match: Tovar against Jake Schreiber. But Tovar made quick work of Schreiber, pinning him in 52 seconds to clinch a perfect and satisfying day for the Spartans.
“We don’t want to just beat people — we want to crush ’em,” Dikin said. “I mean, we don’t want ’em to think they can beat us next time. So we wanna tear ’em apart as much as we can.”
Peak’s two pins on the day moved him into a fourth-place tie with Ryan Arndt on EHS’s all-time list with 60 career falls. Still ahead of Peak are Dusty Spaulding, the Spartan career leader with 83 pins, Aaron Lane with 71 and Brian Ast with 68.
Overall, Buckbee believes EHS is wrestling as well right now as it has all season.
“We continue to get better, and we continue to work towards that peaking when we come around to league, regionals and state. ... We try to be at our best at that point, and we’re slowly creeping that way.”
Emporia Winter Duals
Emporia results
Emporia def. Seaman 59-6, Emporia def. Junction City 56-18, Emporia def. Wichita Heights 49-21, Emporia def. Team X 72-0, Emporia def. Derby 33-22.
Emporia individual records
103 — B. Dakin 4-1
112 — Detwiler 2-3
119 — J. Dakin 4-1
125 — Walecki 3-2
130 — Trahoon 2-3
135 — Tovar 5-0
140 — T. Dikin 4-1
145 — Sanchez 5-0
152 — Peak 5-0
160 — Gaskill 5-0
171 — Lee 4-1
189 — Kolmer 5-0
215 — Barr 4-1
285 — Serna 5-0