Fini

The Parkway Panthers came from behind on Saturday to win the 44th Ken Cole Memorial tournament at Comeaux High School.  Facing an eight-point deficit to Teurlings Catholic at the beginning of the day, the Panthers won the event in the consolation rounds, prevailing with 202.5 points to the Rebels, 187.5 points.  A mere three points behind Teurlings Catholic was Basile, who took home the third-place team trophy with only 12 entrants.

1st - Parkway Panthers	2nd - Teurlings Catholic Rebels	3rd - Basile Bearcats

Suffice to say, what the editor thought looked good "on paper" after Friday's wrestling was completed did not turn out to be the case after the event was over.  Teurlings Catholic had a definite edge in the quarterfinal matches.  Five of their eight wrestlers were seeded higher than their Parkway counterparts.  And their wrestlers were seeded higher than their quarterfinal opponents in five weight classes while the same was true for Parkway in only three weight classes. 

After the quarterfinals the Rebels were still in good shape.  Teurlings Catholic and Parkway each advanced five wrestlers to the semifinals.  The Rebels also topped the Panthers in the semifinals, placing three in the finals to only two for the Panthers.  One Rebel, freshman Ethan Boudreaux, won his weight class, whereas the other four finalists for the Rebels and Panthers placed second.  But things did not work out well for the Rebels in the consolation rounds.  Of their remaining 11 wrestlers, Teurlings Catholic managed only a fourth-place finish and a sixth-place finish.  Parkway had one wrestler place third, but three placed fifth and two placed sixth.

It should be noted that neither team was at 100% of their capabilities.  Teurlings Catholic did not bring a 285 lbs. wrestler.  Had they done so, "on paper" a Rebel 285 lbs. entrant would have scored significantly fewer points than Parkway's Dezrel Eloph.  Eloph, seeded fourth, made it to the semifinals but was injured in his match with Comeaux's Donald Paul and did not compete in the consolation rounds.  "On paper" Eloph would be a heavy favorite over any of Teurlings Catholic's 285 lbs. wrestlers.  Teurlings was missing 2019 Division II runner-up Charles Travasos at 152 lbs., but Parkway was missing Peyton Miller, a 2019 Division II third-place winner, who's season was ended via an injury incurred last week.

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History is rife with events that did not come to fruition no matter how good they looked "on paper."  At one point in 1944 Operation Market Garden looked good enough "on paper" for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to put a halt to General George S. Patton's romp through southeastern France toward Berlin, just to cater to the wishes of British General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, no doubt to sooth his ego after he took weeks longer than he said he would to gain a foothold in northeastern France after D-Day.  An estimated 17,000 Allied casualties later, Operation Market Garden is considered one of the top-ten blunders of World War II (a tale portrayed excellently in the 1977 movie A Bridge Too Far). In 1912 there was the "unsinkable" Titanic.  In 1957 Ford introduced the Edsel.  In 1987 someone had to have read the screenplay for Ishtar.  Those ideas looked good "on paper" to someone, one assumes.

The examples above are, granted, way too extreme to compare to the events of Saturday's wrestling.  Nobody literally died, nor was anyone captured (granted, a few wounds, both physical and mental, were incurred) and nobody lost millions of dollars.  Plus, as far as a comparison to Operation Market Garden, well, that would make Parkway akin to Germany's S.S. Oberberhruppenführe und General der Waffen-SS Wilhelm Bittrich's 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions.  (Albeit his orders originated from a maniac's vision, Bittrich was first and foremost a soldier.  He was never served any time for war crimes and was lauded for allowing a three-hour respite from fighting, allowing the capture and evacuation of over 2,000 wounded British soldiers to German hospitals.)  Along with most of the higher-ranking German officers, he envied the Allies and knew Germany would lose the war.  (I could go on and on, as I do when people make the of mistake asking me about wrestling, so just watch the movie:   .

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Top Fifteen Team Scores

Individual Champions

106	113	120	126	132	138	145
Ethan Boudreaux Teurlings Cath.	Vincent Bruno Mandeville	Alex Yokubaitis St. Louis	Clayton Hill Live Oak	Tyrick Clay Carencro	Jacob Ramirez Rummel	Andrew Trahan Brusly

152	160	170	182	195	220	285
Brad Mahoney East Ascension	Conrad Mitchell St. Amant	Trent Mahoney East Ascension	Isaac Cortez Basile	Bailee Creasey C.E. Byrd	Ashton Freeman Zachary	Donald Paul Comeaux

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Lower Weights: Jacob Ramirez - Rummel Junior Jacob Ramirez is having an excellent season. After this event he was 45-6, but only one of those losses was to a Louisiana opponent.  Brother Martin's Connor Hoffman defeated Ramirez 5-3 in a dual meet on December 10th.  Eleven days later Ramirez avenged that loss with a 3-1 decision over Hoffman in the consolation finals of the Trey Culotta Invitational.  Ramirez won the Raider 8, Lakeshore Invitational and the Gulf Coast Classic prior to the third-place finish at the Trey Culotta.  A little less than a month later he won the Louisiana Classic with a 6-4 win over St. Amant's Corey Brownell. Ramirez was seeded second in this event to C.E. Byrd's Dmetri Teddie, primarily because Teddie was 1-0 against Hoffman and placed second at the Trey Culotta while Ramirez placed third.  They had no other common opponents whom one had defeated and to whom the other lost.  Teddie was 47-2 prior to this tournament, losing to Woodward Academy's (Georgia) Michael Kilich and to St. Amant's Jaden Snyder.  Ramirez also lost to Kilic at the Trey Culotta. Ramirez pinned his first-round opponent in 4:00 and his second-round one in 1:35.  In the quarterfinals, he defeated Holy Cross' Caruso Signorelli 10-4 and then got by Brownell 7-5 to reach the finals.  Teddie schooled Ramirez in the first period, building an 11-2 lead.  The two wrestlers only managed two points apiece in the second period, and Teddie led 13-4 to start the third two-minutes.  Ramirez chose to start the period standing and took down Teddie, allowed Teddie to escape, and took him down again.  There was not enough time in the period for the takedown-let-escape strategy to erase Teddie's six-point lead, so Ramirez was stuck with trying to turn Teddie to his back.  Teddie appeared tired and he tried something he should not have tried when leading by six points.  It backfired on him as Ramirez was able to put Teddie on his back and score a fall with 0:23 remaining.

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Higher Weights: Isaac Cortez - Basile With this victory Cortez's record is now 16-0.  Sixteen matches is a small number at this point in the season, but Cortez has yet to waste any time in consolation rounds.  His first event was the Trey Culotta Invitational.  Not seeded highly, Cortez pinned five of his opponents and scored a major decision over another while winning a second consecutive Trey Culotta title.  He scored pins over all eight opponents in the Brusly Invitational and Rayne Invitational tournaments.  In his three matches before the finals of this event his longest was 1:17.  Prior to the finals Cortez mentioned to the editor that his goal was to not let anyone survive into the third period with him.  At that Cortez FAILED MISERABLY.  It took him six minutes to eke out a 13-5 major decision over Teurlings Catholics David Bernard.  Bernard is a defending Division II state champion who lost all of two matches last season.  This season he has only two losses against 20 wins.  Only one loss came from a Louisiana opponent.  That was a 3-2 decision won by Carencro's Kendrall Williams, also a defending 2019 Division II state champion. After a round-one bye Cortez pinned his next opponent in 1:17.  In the quarterfinals he required all of 1:03, and he took an additional 10 seconds to win his semifinals match in 1:13.  In the finals he did all he needed to do in the first period, which included three takedowns, five nearfall points, one escape point and one penalty point, whereas Bernard only managed an escape and a reversal.  Cortez was ahead 13-3 upon the start of the second period.  In the next four minutes Bernard shut Cortez down completely, outscoring the bearcat 2-0.  In the end Cortez did go the full six minutes and only managed a 13-5 major decision over one of the best wrestlers in the state. Cortez did something else annoying during the match.  Bernard had gotten behind Cortez when they were both on their feet.  Cortez reached back and seemed to grab half of Bernard's face, which he then pulled forward with Bernard smartly following where his face was being taken.  Then Cortez jumped backward over the falling Bernard to end up on top of him.  This was almost as befuddling as the move Eli Larriviere of Jesuit did to the undefeated Javarious Jones in the 2016 126 lbs. Division I finals.

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