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Bayou Elite's Endless Summer
July 3rd, 2017| Written by: Landon Williams and Nick DiGerolamo 

 

 

While many of Louisiana's young wrestlers are busy playing recreational baseball, sunning themselves on the beach or participating in other extracurricular summer activities, a group of young Louisiana wrestlers from Bayou Elite Wrestling Club (BEWC) have decided to make wrestling a year-round activity.

Following trips during the club's folkstyle season to North Alabama (AWC Battle for the Belt Series), Tulsa Oklahoma (Tulsa Nationals), and Valdosta, Georgia, the BEWC rounded-out the folkstyle season with 17 individual USAW state champions and 35 place winners (including boys and girls), from ages 4 (Bantam) to 16 (Cadet) at the USAW Louisiana Folkstyle State Championships.  The club then went to North Louisiana and won the team duals in the elementary and middle school divisions.  

The following week the team endured a 15-hour drive to the USAW Folkstyle Nationals in Cedar Falls Iowa.  That was followed by a 12-hour drive to Independence, Missouri, for the Adidas Folkstyle Nationals.  In those two events, Bayou Elite earned 17 Folkstyle All-American certificates, including a national championship by Jacob Frost.

If that wasn't enough, BEWC continued Louisiana state dominance, by entering the most participants in all freestyle events and garnering the most team points of any club in all events. The team closed the Louisiana freestyle season with 17 individual USAW state champions and 22 place winners (including boys and girls), from ages 4 (Bantam) to 16 (Cadet).

This was followed by a most impressive trip to Atlanta, Georgia, for the USAW Southeast Regional Championships (May 27th-28th).   With 20 participants making the 7-hour trip, BEWC earned 44 individual medals, placing them among the best of the teams that participated.

No one more impressive then Richie Clementi (left) in the Novice 65 lbs. division, who won all three styles (folkstyle, freestyle, and Greco-Roman), and Jake Rando, a three-time Louisiana Division I state folkstyle champion pinned or teched his way to a first-place finish.  Rando’s performance earned him the Southeast Regional outstanding wrestler award. 

With almost a month to prepare, Bayou Elite’s young club wrestlers continued their national pursuits and made a second trip to Atlanta Georgia for USAW freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling Nationals (June 28th-29th).  With 10 individual participants, Louisiana’s fastest growing youth wrestling club took home four All-American medals in Greco-Roman and four All-American Medals in freestyle.  Nico DeSalvo (intermediate 55 lbs.) won the Greco-Roman national championship and placed second in the freestyle competition.

The success at those events showed that the BEWC can compete in any style and at any level. 

It should be noted that DeSalvo, Joe Simon (Novice 75 lbs.), and Nicholas DiGerolamo (Novice 100 lbs.-105 lbs.), managed All-American honors in all three styles of wrestling this season.

Bayou Elite wrestling club and Jake Rando will next participate in the USAW Nationals held July 14th-21st at the FargoDome in Fargo, North Dakota.

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