TNAAU Team HydraSports makes Gold pool at West penn

[durdon]

The TNAAU Team HydraSports coached by Mike Sutherland made the gold pool at West Penn Duals this past weekend and finished 4th overall out of 32 teams.  The Young Guns won the tourney again this year.  This is the best finish ever by a TN Middle school dual team at one of the major national duals. Oh and our 105 got hurt the 2nd match and missed the rest of the tourney, we didn’t have a 130 and we had a kid not make weight and we still made the gold pool with those 3 holes.  

 I don’t have the results of the individual kids since most of the PA tourneys they still use pen and paper, but I know that Brayden Ivy of Morristown followed up on his 2nd place finish at Super32 by being our 1 TN kid that went undefeated at West penn.  Hopefully, Mike will post the results of the rest of our  kids that did well.  

Also, A huge shoutout to the TNAAU board especially Salter, Isabell, Kramer, and Sutherland for stepping up and providing leadership, coaching and financial support for Team HydraSports this year.   TNAAU is paying the registration fee and covering the cost of the coaches for every dual the team enters.  Had the TNAAU not stepped in and provided their support we were going to shutdown the HydraSports travel teams this year, so a big kudos to them for keeping it going and giving kids across the state a chance to get some national exposure. 

 It may not seem that important that our TN El and MS kids travel nationally but we had 8 MS kids place at Super32 this year and over the past 4 years we had only had 4 total placers.   We are getting much better at the state MS level which is going to translate to the HS level then hopefully to the D1 level.   If you look at all the current NCAA D1 high level guys from GA like Ryan  Milhof and Sean Russell they were all on that first Minion travel team..  

[YOUTHCOACH16]

Sorry Scott, I just saw this. Im so busy with work and my club team I haven't had time to post results. You pretty much nailed it though. This was a k-8th grade tournament with 25 teams. We had a last minute cancelation at 1 weight, Coach Laxtons son Arlo was injured and we felt it just wasn't worth risking further injury for him to continue to  compete.  One kid didn't make weight. We were able to pick up a fill in for one of the slots from another teams backups, he wrestled his heart out for us but we missed a lot of potential points there.  

We started out strong and won our pool going 4-0 with a 69-15 win of Battlezone Grey (ohio), 74-16 win over Indiana Outlaws, a 66-28 win over Omp Gold (Pa),  and then we closed out the pool with a 46-30 win over undefeated Team Virginia. This put us in the Gold bracket against the other 5 pool winners. We felt we had a chance to beat Battlezone Black (oh)  if we adjusted the lineup . I asked the affected  kids what they wanted to do and they all agreed to insert our wrestler who didn't make his original weight and bump up from there. The move paid off and we won 42-24 to put us at 5-0 and ensure a top 4 finish out of 25 teams. I was extremely proud of the kids that decided to put their personal records aside and bump up a eight for their teammates. Its one thing to do it in Tennessee competition but a whole other matter to do it in national level competition.  I don't have the exact scores of our next matches but we lost to 3 teams from Nj and Pa. With our full lineup we would have had a good chance of beating Nj but probably still not enough at this point to have beaten the Pa teams that finished 1-2.    

When I first started coaching our state teams 12-13 years ago we were getting shut out against the Pa,Nj  Oh, Ia  teams. We would lose to Va, In, Mi  teams by  20 + points. Now we are beating a lot of them and don't get embarrassed by anyone anymore. We will next travel to the VAC in Virgnia Beach Dec 8-10. This is the premier duals event in the country with 40+ mats going at once.

Our top Individual results were :

Braden Ivy 8-0 ( and even bumped up a weight and beat a beast in O.T )

Sam Herring 7-1 ( Beat 3 kids who had beaten him previously)

Garrett Foreman 7-1 ( had several beautiful throws that pumped up the team)

Calvin Eason  6-2 ( As slick and exciting to watch as any kid ive ever been around)

David Dixon 6-2 ( just started to come into his own and will be a force in Hs )

Joseph Uhorchuk 6-2 ( One of our younger kids who just doesn't stop wrestling )  

 

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by YOUTHCOACH16