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Curtis tournament is a event

Editor/01/20/2013 - 01/18/2013 Story

Class AA, A, B & C Championships

John Curtis Christian School, River Ridge, Louisiana · January 18th, 2013

(Complete results and brackets may be found on the Archives Website.)

Champion - 183 124 101 89 87 83 75 75 57 51 22 11 3 John Curtis Doyline Calvary Baptist Episcopal Lakeside Evangel Grand Lake De la Salle South Plaquemines Dunham South Cameron Woodlawn French Settlement

Thirteen teams comprised the field of 94 wrestlers looking for 14 1st-place awards on Saturday.  Three team awards and Outstanding Wrestler awards in the lighter and heavier weight classes were also presented.

In the end it was not that John Curtis was assured the win in the 2nd Annual Curtis AA, A, B & C Championships.  It wasn’t that the schools from north and west Louisiana were able to “measure up” their New Orleans area opponents for the Division III state championships a month hence.  And it was not that the wrestlers were assured two matches, which many of them would not have received had they entered the Louisiana Classic, which was being held in Baton Rouge that Saturday. In the end it was Episcopal High School of Baton Rouge Coach Phil Bode who made the assessment that meant the most.  “I love this type of tournament,” he said.  Bode was referring to a one-day event that did not take up the entire day.  He meant an event that was not so large that it prevented wrestlers a chance to place third due to the five-match rule.  He meant an event that did not last into the late evening hours and thus entail the wrestlers getting home in the wee hours of the morning.

Not for coaches only   A tournament run as efficiently as Curtis coach John Kendrick ran this one did not need anything else, but that did not stop the host school.  Knowing two of the schools had a four to five hour trip back to southwest Louisiana, and four others a longer road to north Louisiana, the Curtis team put together a smorgasbord of food in the cafeteria after the matches were over for the kids and coaches to enjoy prior to their long trips back home.

[Photos below, when clicked, should open into a new window at their actual size.]

Team Trophies and Outstanding Wrestlers

Champions: John Curtis Patriots Runners-up: Doyline Panthers  Third: Calvary Baptist Cavaliers OW: Joshua Wicke of Grand Lake OW: Peyton Goerner of Doyline

Other coaches will say their teams attended the event to get some experience against wrestlers with whom they are not familiar and to get more relevant experience than they might have gained at the Louisiana Classic.  And that they did.

The defending Division III runners-up scored 183 points, far outpaced second-place Doyline (124) and Calvary Baptist (101).  Episcopal, Lakeside, Evangel and Grand Lake followed before another New Orleans school, De la Salle, appears in 8^th place. Dunham was 9^th, followed by South Cameron, whose lone wrestler, Kelby Comeaux, scored all the points that were possible for the one-time wrestling powerhouse Tarpons.  Woodlawn and French Settlement rounded out the thirteen-team competition, in which every team won at least one match.

Nine of the teams had individual champions.  John Curtis had five.  Doyline had two.  Calvary Baptist, De la Salle, Episcopal, Evangel, Grand Lake, Lakeside and South Cameron each had one.

Weight	Synopsis
106	John Curtis’ Prentice Spurlock was the first champion for the Patriots.  At 106 lbs. Spurlock pinned his first two opponents in a combined 62 seconds before his 9-3 victory over Episcopal’s William Medick. .  This weight class was tied with 113 lbs. as the largest one of the tournament with nine entrants.  Lakeside’s John Watson, who lost to Medick in the semifinals, scored two falls to place third.
113	Evangel’s championship came at 113 lbs.  Freshman Bradley Wright had pinned Doyline’s Brittany Bates in 1:27 on November 5th.  Miss Bates, also a freshman, put up a much better effort during this match, only succumbing to a pin at 5:50.  Wright, who would have scored a technical fall had he only received the associated nearfall points, has only one actual loss this season, a 9-2 loss to returning Brusly Division III state champion Baret Sanchez, versus 26 actual match victories.  He also won the Evangel Eagle Open, in which Bates placed third.  Edward Daniel of Episcopal, one of Bates’ victims in her march to the finals, placed third with a pin in 22 seconds.
120	South Cameron’s freshman Kelby Comeaux is the Tarpons’ only representative this season, and he practices with the Grand Lake squad.  He represented the school’s 64 previous state champions, including Grand Lake coach Ronnie Picou (1968) quite well with two pin to reach the finals, in which he defeated Curtis’ Bryce Cortez by a score of 7-4.  Riley Smith of Lakeside placed third.
126	Cole Pannell won the first of Doyline’s championships at 126 lbs. with a first period (1:21) fall over Grand Lake’s Anica Logan.  Chris Danos of South Plaquemines won the consolation bracket to place third.
132	Lakeside’s championship occurred in the finals at 132 lbs. in which Cameron Corley won an exciting 20-14 match against James Graham of South Plaquemines.  Hunter Withers of Evangel placed third.
138	Defending Division III state champion Joshua Wicke of Grand Wicke, at 138 lbs., dispatched of his two opponents in 1:32 and 3:00, which earned him the Outstanding Wrestler Award for the lighter weight classes.  Wicke may have been the “class” of the field, but the others had very close matches against each other.  Jack Bowman of Episcopal pinned South Plaquemines’ Diontae James in the first round, but De la Salle’s Dominic Bioc needed a “Sudden Victory” period to get past Jones and into the consolation finals.  Bioc was no “piece of cake” for finalist Christopher Inocencio of Doyline who defeated him 2-0 to get into the finals match against Wicke.  And Bioc won third place via only a 6-4 decision over Bowman.
145	The 145 lbs. championship was an exciting and fast paced match between Episcopal’s James Davis and Jeffrey Clark of Doyline.  Davis finally proved the stronger of the two with a pin at 5:32.  The odds favored a Curtis wrestler to place third, as three of the seven participants in the weight class were from the host school.  Their designated starter Adam Saucier did just that, defeating teammate Nicholas Bloomer in 1:52.
152	De la Salle’s Alex Martin probably had the best resume in the entire event field.  The returning Division III state champion placed third at the Mandeville Open, won the Griffin Open, did not place in but only lost to Brother Martin’s Jordan Giroir by a point and Comeaux’s two-time Division I state champion Tyrek Malveaux by two points in the Spartan Open, placed second at the Sam Sara and Thomas Jefferson tournaments and won he Brusly Invitational.  He easily took care of Doyline’s John Inocencio, who placed third, in 26 seconds, and spent a little more time in the finals match, taking 1:53 to pin Lakeside’s Thomas Lambert.
160	G’Cory Fullilove put Curtis back in the limelight at 160 lbs., but not easily, as only a late third period reversal garnered him a 2-0 win over Calvary Baptist’s Heath Lovitt.  That match easily won the “By Far the Most Exciting Wrestling Match in which the Least Amount of Points were Scored” Award, but Coach John Kendrick forgot to have that plaque engraved.  Dunham’s Clayton Kavanaugh placed third.
170	Curtis crowned its third champion at 170 lbs. in Baron Clofer, who pinned Calvary Baptist’s Justice Henson in 3:53.  Clofer’s toughest match was a 6-0 victory over Grand Lake’s James Phillips.  Phillip’s simply had an unlucky placement in the bracket, as he easily won third place with a 2:46 fall.
182	Doyline’s Peyton Goerner, at 182 lbs., won the Outstanding Wrestler Award in the heavier weight classes after a tough 8-5 finals victory over Calvary Baptist’s Chris Thompson.  South Plaquemines’ Kevin Drury placed third for the Hurricanes by pinning Grand Lake’s Michael Logan in 1:16.
195	Calvary Baptist was rewarded at 195 lbs., but it was due to an injury forfeit in the finals by Patrick Martin of Curtis.  Jerald Amaya of Evangel also received a forfeit from Grand Lake’s Jameson Picou, but the circumstances of that forfeit are unclear.
220	Mason Pembo of the Patriots had to earn his championship by wrestling for 5:22 before he finally pinned Episcopal’s Taylor McKay.  Luke Griffith of Lakeside defeated Calvary Baptist’s Justin Hester 13-9 for third place
285	John Curtis’ Spencer Lemoine admitted he was not pleased with his wrestling effort in the finals at 285 lbs.  Much of that frustration no doubt originated in two failed lateral drops of Evangel’s Logan Williams.  Missing one of those at 285 lbs. can have disastrous results.  But Lemoine was able to score 16 points to Williams’ 10 and win nonetheless.  Kirk Wilson of Dunham placed third with a 2:17 fall over Grand Lake’s Spencer Shiele.

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Doyline's Brittany Bates pins her way through the quarter finals at 113 lbs. and receives the congratulations of the Curtis coaches

 Editor LA Wrestling News | 01/18/2013

Nine schools will converge on John Curtis Christian School in River Ridge for the 2nd Annual Class AA, A, B & C Championships.  Two competitors will be from the New Orleans area in De la Salle High School and South Plaquemines High School in Boothville-Venice.  Two team, Episcopal High School and University Lab, hail from Baton Rouge.  Two teams will come from the Lake Charles area in Grand Lake and South Cameron.  And two teams will be making the "long haul" from northwest Louisiana: Doyline High School, located east of Shreveport, and Evangel Christian Academy of Shreveport.

John Tademy, the head coach at Evangel, views the event this way: "It started with an idea to get some of the smaller teams coming together. The original idea was to expose wrestling in areas of the state, that did not have wrestling.  The first ever 2A tournament was held in Alexandria. John Curtis has been hosting the tournament since. The north Louisiana teams attend the 2A tournament for several reasons. One reason is because of the family atmosphere. The coaches, wrestlers, parents, and fans are wonderful. The second reason is our kids get to go head to head against wrestlers in our division.

Divisional wrestling is important as the LHSAA State Wrestling Championships will be held at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner on February 15th and 16th.

Also held this weekend is the Louisiana Classic in Baton Rouge.  The Louisiana Classic is the largest wrestling event in the state aside from the state championships, but it is not divided into three divisions based on a school's enrolment.  Additionally, the loser of a match in the first or second round of the Louisiana Classic must hope the person who won that match advances to the semifinals in order to qualify for the consolation rounds.  Nine wrestlers are seeded in each weight class, so the chances of two Division III wrestlers facing each other are small.  The Curtis tournament guarantees experience against Division III opponents.

A list of the participating schools with their expected rosters is presented below:

School & Wrestlers	School & Wrestlers	School & Wrestlers
John Curtis River Ridge, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 Prentice Spurlock 160 G'Corey Fullilove 106 - UN Brendan Wilcox 160 - UN Roger Irula 113/UN Lane Boudreaux/Deckland Sparrow 170 Baron Clofer 120 Bryce Cortez 182 Josh Sweigart 126 Cory Ronan 195 Patrick Martin 145/UN Adam Saucier/ Rod Schouest/ Nicholas Bloomer 220/UN Mason Pembo/ Michael Byrd 152 Cody Hamrick 285 Spencer Lemoine	De la Salle New Orleans, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 Cameron LeBlanc 160 Logan Sylve 113 Richard Smith 170 Ryou Morishita 120 Glenn Gebo 182 Stephen Robinson 138 Dominik Bioc 195 Trenton Anderson 145 Troy Dupont 220 Lee Schwartzbach 152 Alex Martin 285 Jalen Haydell	Doyline Doyline, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 Peyton Pannell 138 Chris Inocencio 113 Brittany Bates 145 Jeffrey Clark 120 Austin Page 152 John Inocension 126 Cole Pannell 160 Johnny Brooks 132 Levi Dufour 182 Phillip Goerner
Episcopal Baton Rouge, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 William Medick 145 James Davis 113 Edward Daniel 152 Jack Bowman 120 Will Forrester 160 Dylan Maassen-Veeters 126 Griffin Dynes 170 Ben Whitley 132 Grant Grantham 220 Taylor McKay	Evangel Shreveport, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 113 Bradley Wright 145 Justin Smith 120 Jacob Bailey 195 Jerald Amaya 132 Hunter Withers 285 Logan Williams	Grand Lake Lake Charles, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 Joey Cavolaski 170 James Phillips 126 Anica Logan 182 Michael Logan 132 Ross Dahlen 195 Jameson Picou 138 Josh Wicke 285 Spencer Schiele 152 Michael Mudd
South Cameron Creole, LA Weight Wrestler 120 Kelby Comeaux	South Plaquemines Boothville-Venice, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 DeAndre Turner 126 Chris Danos 106 UN Dane Michal 132 James Graham 106 UN Chris Lebeouf 138 Dieontae James 113 Tony Sode 170 Jose Sylve 120 Gerald Barthelemy 182 Kevin Drury     285 Jesse Phea	Lakeside Minden, LA Weight Wrestler 120 Riley Smith 132 Cameron Corley 152 Thomas Lambert 220 Luke Griffith
Woodlawn Baton Rouge, LA Weight Wrestler 113 Lacklan Kristonis	Dunham Baton Rouge, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 132 Wes Belleau 170 Griffin Miller 160 Clayton Kavanaugh 285 Kirk Wilson	Calvary Baptist Shreveport, LA Weight Wrestler Weight Wrestler 106 Bryce Rogers 182 Chris Thompson 126 Kyle Downey 195 Tyler Sullivan 132 Cory Anaya 220 Justin Hester 160 Heath Lovitt 285 Trey Flannery 170 Justice Henson
French Settlement French Settlement, LA Weight Wrestler 220 Kyle Pitre

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