Status: Fini

8 teams took to the mats on Friday for the first day of the Ken Cole Memorial Tournament.  Seventy-one "pig-tail" matches were completed to just reach full 32-man brackets. After wrestling was completed in the little gym and the very serene cafeteria, only the main gym remained to watch the last of Friday's matches.  Calm came at 11:15 p.m. in the form of no more whistles, no more coaches' exhortations and no more general crowd noise.  One could say the "silence is as thunderous."  Comeaux was at peace after eight hours of wrestling on eight mats.  All of this was accomplished Friday in order to get the tournament to its standard Saturday format: a round of consolation matches, the quarterfinals, another round of consolations, the semifinals, the remaining consolation matches and then the finals. After the "pig-tail" round and the rounds of 32 and 16, Brother Martin was leading the field by 18 points.  That margin should increase as the quarterfinals and semifinals are completed.  But who will come out of the fray Saturday night in 2nd and 3rd place is still "up in the air."  The second, third, fourth and fifth place teams are distinguished from each other by three points.

Very few upsets occurred on Friday.  That could be hailed as an accomplishment re the seeding committee decisions, but most noteworthy upsets start at the quarterfinal round.  A few 7th and 8th seeds did not make it to the quarterfinals, but that is also not unexpected.

Joey Forey of Holy Cross defeated Steven Rumney of Brother Martin at the Mandeville open, which Foret won.

UPSET....or is it?   One third seed, however, was defeated in the Round of 16.  But the circumstances may not really merit "upset" status. Live Oak's defending Division II state champion, Jacob Chenevert, was seeded third and after a bye won his R-32 match with a fall in 2:15.  But then he ran across Joseph Foret of Holy Cross.  Foret was not seeded for this event, but he beat Chenevert pretty soundly 10-3.  But if one goes back to the Mandeville Open, one will find that Foret won that against some of Brother Martin's and Rummel's best.  While not wrestling a lot this season, he does have 10 wins against only two losses, both of which occurred in Las Vegas and one being from his teammate Beau Bush.

The editor is proud that he only took 166 photos on Friday.  His plan was to try to get photos of a lot of the wrestlers who A) might not be participating on Saturday because they lost twice on Friday, and B) to get photos of schools that get very little media exposure.  Only a hand full of those will be published here as time is running short for this article to be completed.  But I saw a few things worth mentinoing, and made a couple of promises that I intend to keep.  I you saw me take a photo that was not in this piece, please know it will be in the final one.

The Louisiana Wrestling News is happy to publish its first picture of Brother Martin's 120 lbs. entrant Seth Johnson.  Seth got through his first match with a fall in 3:09.  Shortly after the match started Johnson's nose started to bleed, and bleed and bleed.  Johnson used up all of his injury time and had to cede the match and then Johnson kept on bleeding for about a half an hour.  In his next match he used a mask (overcoming a possible fear of drowning) and pinned his opponent in 1:55. The ladies were represented well by Acadian's Raven Guidry.  Ms. Guidry, who wrestled against competitors who weigh on or about 106 lbs. each, Her first match was against third-seeded Chris Zea of Holy Cross, but she showed plenty of pluck but did not know enough to very experienced Tiger wrestler.  She did wrestle well in her second match, pinning Jake Ottenweller of St. Louis in 1:33.  She was not as fortunate in her next match, but she can say that, as a freshman, she has won a Ken Cole Memorial match.

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These are a few photos I told people I would publish late Friday or, as it happens to be right now, early Saturday.

Central's Austin Gouedy scores a fall in 2:51.  This match wasn't easy for Decoreyon Howard of Huntington, but he managed to score a fall in 2:28   Nicholas Malveaux of Comeaux scores a fall in 3:48

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"Blood time" is watched carefully as Kelby Comeaux of South Cameron started bleeding with a one point lead an five seconds remaining in his match with Brennan Landry of North Vermillion.  The blood stopped long enough for Comeaux to keep Landry from scoring during the final five seconds.

In perhaps the "gutsiest" match of the evening, Comeaux's Alex Norris needed an escape and the takedown he got after the shot above to take and hold a lead over Baker's Keon Addison.  Earlier in the match Addison forced Norris off of the mat when both wrestlers were standing.  Norris grunted loudly in pain after that as in the process, Addison had stepped on Norris' foot which had two broken toes.  Norris tacked on an additional three points before the match was over.

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Two photos which no doubt will add to the already monstrous egos of two eight-year-olds: Gabe Dalton (Connor Stampley's little brother) and his best friend made the article about last week's Jacob McMillan Memorial.

The editor expects to be sternly rebuked for publishing these photos and not taking any new photos of Gabe's older sister Chandler.  The editor will try to remedy that situation on Saturday.

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Best 11:30 p.m. buy at a 24-hour CVS...	Worst thing to have in one's trunk when one cannot reach the part of one's back that is throbbing and having spasms...
Battery powered electric razor!	Industrial bottle of BIOFREEZE!

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Day One Final Team Standings

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