durdon

TN didn’t send all of our hammers either. All of the tournaments(Super32, Knockout, poweraid, NHSCA, Nat Prep) post pandemic outside of Cadet and Junior Nationals have not been to their normal standards as wrestlers aren’t traveling the way they were before. Hopefully now that we are coming out of this things will get back to normal. National Prep ended up being tougher than I expected and some of the weights were legit. 132 was freakin loaded.

It would have been interesting that is for sure. Both Jake Kaminski and Cole Deery are ranked in the top 10 above Parker. I think Parker matches up extremely well against both of them and I personally think Parker would have won that bracket. TN was also missing Corday, Dendy, Taylor, Anthony, Ivy and Roller who would have all had an opportunity to make the finals if not win it too.

TN had 4 finalist this year at National Preps 160 Gavin Cagle - McCallie 2nd 170 Alex Whitwortth - McCallie 2nd 195 David Harper - Baylor 2nd 220 Gabe Fisher - MBA 2nd Placers 170 Omaury Alvarez -Baylor 3rd 160 Aidan Bowers - CBHS 4th 170 Gunnar Garriques - Baylor 4th 120 Jackson Bond - Baylor 5th 182 Gervacio Gonzalez CBHS 6th 132 Dayne Dalrymple - CBHS 7th 152 Mason Alley - Baylor 7th 195 Connor Billingsley - CBHS 7th 220 Asher Hodge - CBHS 7th 106 Alex Ropski CBHS 8th 285 Max Fisher MBA 8th

Yes, great win by Nick in the seniors!

Big shout out to both Cooper Flynn and Cody Chittum for both placing at UWW Junior Nationals this past weekend. Because it is for a spot of the Junior world team, UWW Juniors is 20U and it’s only 10 weight classes, the Junior Nationals is by far toughest tournament for any HS kid to compete in. These were big brackets and the vast majority of wrestlers competing were already in college. The level of competition this year was simply incredible. Cooper Flynn from Seymour, TN competed at 57kilo in freestyle and ran an absolute gauntlet on his side of the bracket to finish 4th. It was one of the most impressive runs I’ve ever seen. Cody Chittum of Cleveland completed at 67kilos in Greco and finished 5th. Cody was coming off a leg injury sustained at TN State tournament and was only able to train for last 3 weeks, so his placement is impressive. Georgia had 3 High schoolers who AA too. Matthew Singleton of Woodward Academy won 77kilos Greco and is on the junior World Team going to Russia. Matthew also placed 7th at 79kilos in freestyle. Caleb Henson of Woodland HS placed 5th at 70kilos. Jaxson Smith also of Woodland placed 4th at 86kilos.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out. The whole purpose of having a National body is so that they set the standard nationwide so that it doesn’t cause issues when teams travel. PA has been pushing hard for 13 and some smaller states or states where wrestling isn’t popular have been pushing for 12. My guess is the majority of states will end up adopting the 13 weight classes.

In arguably the toughest tournament in all of HS, a big Shout out to Ashton Davis of Cleveland for placing in both the Greco and Freestyle UWW Cadets. Ashton wrestled 110k and placed 6th in Greco and 5th in Freestyle. Great Job Ashton!

Big shout out to Cooper Hilton - Boom Ranch for earning a spot on U15 Team USA that is going to Pan Am’s. Cooper won both Greco and Freestyle tournaments at 44K. In Freestyle in the finals that are a best 2 out of 3 matches, Cooper won the first 2 matches and took out #1 kid ranked in country who is a multi time Trinity award winner, multi time super 32 MS champ, and multi time Tulsa champ in the process. Great Job Cooper and Good luck at Pan Am Games! Proud to have a TN kid wearing Team USA singlet! Also congrats to Hunter Strugill of TN Outlaws who placed in U15 in Greco at 57k.

Senior Nationals - 3 placers 2nd place - Daniel Uhorchuk 120p - Signal Mountain - West Point Commit 7th place - Dayne Dalrymple 132p - Christian Brothers - UTC Commit 8th place - Brice Barton 126p Whitwell Junior Nationals - 2 placers Champ - David Harper 195p - Baylor 3rd place Gunner Garriques - 182p - Baylor Sophomore Nationals - 6 placers 2nd place Omaury Alvarez 170p - Baylor 3rd Place Bryson Terrell 106p - Bradley Central 3rd Place Noah Todd 220p - Wilson Central 4th place - Caleb Uhrochuck 106p - Signal Mountain 6th place - Thomas Stadel 182p - Maryville 7th place Luke Belcher - 138p -Bradley Central Freshman Nationals - 1 placer 5th place Landon Desselle 138p - Summitt Results 3 Small School placers with a Finalist 4 D2 placers with 2 finalist and one champ 5 Big School placers

Boom - Congrats!

Well this was going to be the year of big traveling but dang Covid.. I for one don’t think we need to get rid of the 3 divisions. I think for Team Duals it works very well. For the individual, I think that there is something to be said for winning your division and those kids want to wrestle the kids from the schools they compete with in team duals. But my suggestion would be to hold the normal 32 Man Big school, 16 Man Small school and 8 man private school tournament but to call it the division Championships instead of States. Then the next weekend take the 6 medalist from all 3 divisions and hold another 2 day tournament and call it the State Tournament. This was someone could be the Small School Champion and then finish 2nd at State. I don’t see why the TSSAA doesn’t do this because it would be another money making weekend for them and would probably double the revenue they make off Wrestling. it sure would have been fun this year if we can come back the next weekend and held a combined states. Of course, it would have really changed what weights a lot of the kids went for their Division championships. With Chittum at 45 that would have vacated 45 in the other 2 divisions I would have guessed and that would have had a snowball effect on 38,32,and probably 26.

I can remember just a few years ago, the guys in GA being excited because they had four GA wrestlers that qualified for the Nationals. This year GA has 13, Alabama has 1, TN has 1(congrats Drew!), Fl has 6, NC has 3, Kentucky has 2, for a total of 26 D1National qualifiers from the Deep South. I would think this has to be a record for the #Dirty South

The TSSAA changed the restrictions on travel 2 years ago. Teams are now allowed to travel to any tournaments anywhere as much as they like. Covid screwed everything this year but there were a couple of TN that got into Ironman this year, several that were going to Beast, Two that went to knockout this year and two others that were signed up but had to cancel at the last minute due to covid. I believe Lakeway was going to Powerade and of course several teams were going back to KC stampede and Cheesehead. Plus, all the privates would have gone to National Prep. Look at Cleveland, Greenville, Baylor, Lakeway, Christian Brothers, MCCALLIE all to do extensive traveling next year.

Yes, I meant Ground zero as in starting a brand new program in the state. Really impressive job by Tony, and I’ll second the Good dude comment. Tony is a class act and I’ve been extremely impressed by how well coached his kids are. All of his kids are getting better in his program. Lakeway is going to become a major player in D2 starting next year. Tony was very deserving of this award. Another coach that is doing one heck of a job is Mike Sutherland at Boyd. He had 6 really good freshman this year and he got 6 more coming in next year. Boyd will have a full lineup next year and they will be one of the top 3 teams in D2 East. The landscape of the D2 is about to really change over the next few years because of these two programs. Also, I would also say he is always over looked because they were good before he got there but Joey Knox is doing an incredible job at Cleveland too. They are getting stronger and better every year under Joey. I was really impressed at the AAA tournament with just how well coached and skilled all his kids were. There is a reason why Cleveland set the modern public school record for most state champs. All 3 of these guys did an incredible job this year!

Tony has done one heck of a job starting from ground zero and building the Lakeway Program!

The D2 coaches use the OW award in D2 as a wrestler of the year award and the D2 OW award is not related to tournament performance. Not saying that it’s the correct criteria but that’s the way they handle it. At least with D2 you can define why they give out the OW award to a particular wrestler each year. It would be nice if the D2 coaches had a Wrestler of the year award and a separate Tournament OW award.

My mistake. I checked before I posted but I missed the Gobel match. Good job by Bradford.

This is where I still have issue with Cody not getting the OW. If you take Cody out of the Tournament, I think we would all agree that 45 was the 2nd toughest weight class behind 32. Braxton ended up not placing in this bracket so that shows you how tough this weight was. If you add in Cody, then 45 was the toughest overall weight class at state. Cody was the only state champ that had to defeat 3 returning medalist to win his title. Again, he was the only State champ in the tournament to beat 3 returning medalist. And, he was the only person to pin his way through the tournament. I can see the argument that Bradford should have gotten it. He did have to beat two returning state medalist in the 2nd toughest weight. But, Bradford had two close decisions. Tre I still don’t see. Tre didn’t beat a single returning state medalist and he didn’t pin his way through his bracket at a weight that objectively wouldn’t even be considered one of the top 8 toughest weights this year. I still fail to see how what Cody accomplished wasn’t the most impressive performance at the tournament. He PINNED everyone, he was the only Champ to beat 3 returning state medalist, and he did it in the toughest weight class at state this year. His only negative was that he is so much better than everyone else at his weight he made it look to easy which ended up taking away from how impressive what he accomplished was.

No, Laxton would bonus Kaufman. It’s 7-7 if you play it straight up. But, this would never end up being played straight up. So it would come down to the flip and bonus.

Just to be clear. For High School, Cody has only attended Blair his freshman year and he is at Cleveland his Sophomore year. He attended Mccallie when he was in middle school. and yes, 100% Cody will be at Cleveland for the rest of his HS Career.

It was 63 that Red Bank had 8 then in 64 they had 6 and in 65 they had 5. Like you said with less weight classes. Unbelievably impressive.

I’m not sure..

Actually I was wrong, I thought I heard Pete won it, but turns out Joey won the Coaches award.

Joey put 9 in the finals and had 6 overall champs. Cleveland is the first AAA School EVER to have 6 individual champs in a single season. Only 1 AAA school has ever had 5 champs in the same year and that was Bradley when they did it 3 times back in the early 2000’s. Let me repeat that NO AAA SCHOOL has ever had more than 5 champs in a single year. if you want to look at just public schools before the split you have to go back 41 years to find a public school that had 6 champs in a single year when East Ridge did it in 1980. What’s more impressive about the job Joey did this year is no one seriously thought Cleveland was going to have more than 3 champs this year. The coaching job Joey did this year and what he accomplished is nothing short of incredible.

That is the hard thing about OW. If you go by points then the heavy’s always have an advantage since they pin more but then if you try to reward the kids inside the bell curve (126-152) who always have the toughest brackets then it becomes a subjective beauty contest.