Panther wrestlers take team 3rd at Soroco

Coach pleased with grappler's performance at Colorado invitational

The Saratoga High School wrestling team went to Soroco Invitational in Oak Creek, Colo. on Friday and Saturday and came out with a team 3rd place.

"The kids were a little disappointed they didn't come out with a trophy, but we came in with the second least amount of kids out of 15 teams," Zach Schmidt head wrestling coach said. "We had some great effort and Jerry Everett really was impressive."

Friday night was a dual against Soroco where the Panthers came out on top 30-24 and against Hayden which they tied 36-36.

Saturday, the Panthers had two wrestlers take 1st in their weight class. Justin Shotwell won 120 weight class and Tristan Gray won the 195 weight class.

"Tristan won the 195 division, but he didn't wrestle his best," Schmidt said. "We are looking forward to getting him more competition this week."

J. Everett came in 2nd in the weight class of 113.

"Jerry was easily our wrestler of the week," Schmidt said. "He wrestled that kid really well who ended up winning player of the tournament. Can't say much about losing to a kid like that and Jerry really stood out in the tournament with his consistency. "

Andrew Everett took 4th in the 138 weight class and was aggressive, which pleased his coaches.

"Andrew was way more aggressive than we have seen him in a long time," Schmidt said.

Schmidt said Max Dahl, who came in 3rd in the 170 weight class, had the most matches of his wrestlers.

"Max wrestled all five and four on Friday for nine matches," Schmidt said. "Walking out with nine matches under your belt is a good weekend to have."

Schmidt said most of the team all got medals. The two that did not, he said, just barley missed out.

Jacob Flowers came in 3rd in the 220 weight class and Heath Cushing came in 4th in the 145 weight class.

"We had a lot of bright spots," Schmidt said. "We were more concerned about the progress from match to match than where we stood in the end as a team."

He said it should be remembered the squad is still young and he feels major strides have been made in the past two weeks.

"You know, we made a ton of strides in the past couple weeks and we have ten more weeks before regionals, so that gives us a lot of time for us to make a lot more strides," Schmidt said.

The next scheduled tournament is the Saratoga Quad starting at 5:30 on Dec. 19 at Saratoga High School.

 

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