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| Iowa's Team Valley takes the title; other out-of-state teams place 2nd-10th at the 2015 Jazz Town Duals |
| July 18th, 2015| Written by: Editor |
| The Venue | Awards | Ricio and Reece's Pieces | Outstanding Wrestlers | Best Sportsmanship | Saturday in Brief | Sunday's Brackets | Kendon's Farewell |
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Miscellany | Editor's Notes |
One Louisiana coach summed up the weekend by saying: "What place are we wrestling for? Let's just challenge the other coaches to a game of beer pong and get out of here."
That quote was a reflection of the caliber of the competition in the 2015 Jazz Town Duals, held June 20th and 21st at the Xavier University Convocation Center.
Twenty-eight teams from Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Teas and Louisiana participated at the event, which consisted of pool round on Saturday to determine which teams would be in the championship and consolation tournaments on Saturday.
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[At this point the editor wishes to reassert the fact that if a loss by a person or team is newsworthy, it indicates that the wrestler or team is very good.]
There is not a better way to describe the quality of the out-of-state competition than to mention that, in the eight matches in which they participated, the Crusader Wrestling Club posted a record of 5-3. When the Crusaders lose one dual meet in a season it is considered pretty big news. In the last three years it has taken some very good teams to defeat the Crusaders: Wyoming Seminary last season, Team Valley and Mater Dei, Indiana in last year's Jazz Town Duals, and McArthur, Oklahoma, in the 2012 Deep South Bayou Duals. In all fairness, though, one must realize the off-season clubs do not necessarily reflect the strength of the high schools their members will represent in the 2015-16 season.
In the pool round the Crusaders placed second, losing to Perry Meridian of Indiana 49-12. In the championship bracket they lost to Pittsburg, Kansas (which sent a much better contingent than last year) in the first round 42-30. They followed that with a 77-6 first round consolation match against Tate, Florida, but then lost a close match to Turks Head, Pennsylvania 42-36. They finished with a 48-18 win over Bloomington south of Indiana 48-18 to earn 11th place.
The Crusaders did lose Taylor Gambill after only one match on Saturday, but Crusader Paul Elmer won the match in that weight class, and even a pin by Gambill would not have prevented a Crusader loss. The only other Louisiana team to advance to Sunday's championship was the Westbank Wrestling Club, which finished 16th.
Three Louisiana Division I state champions, Steven Shields, Jake Rando and Josh Ramirez, lost matches over the weekend. Louisiana, however, made their presence known via 8-0 records posted by Nicholas Lirette and Travon Honor of the Westbank Wrestling Club, Travis Viener of the Crusader Wrestling Club and two-time Division III state champion Kendon Kayser, competing with the Florida Back-in-Black team.
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| The event was again held at the Xavier University Convocation Center which proved once again that it is a very wrestling-friendly arena. Ten mats fit just fine, the seating was ample and it was air-conditioned. Kudos again go to Jesuit coach Lance Nicholl who organized the event, which ran smoothly and ahead of schedule. |
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Penn Gold's Blake Rypel in
the heavier weight classes (photo left) and Archer's Chris Diaz
in the lighter weight classes, were voted the Outstanding Wrestlers of
the tournament Rypel pinned his eight opponents in times of 0:23, 1:12, 1:09, 3:16, 0:48, 2:25, 0:56 and 4:20. In his eight matches Diaz won via scores of 5-1, 10-1, 12-1 and 3-0, and via pins of 0:53, 0:55, 0:45 and 0:38. |
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Penn Gold's Drew Hildebrandt gets the LWN editor's Best Sportsmanship award (which only consists of this part of the Website, but who knew?) for his conduct in Penn Gold's semifinals win against Best Trained. During an escape by his opponent Hildebrandt was slapped a tad hard as the two wrestlers went out of bounds. However, prior to resuming the match, Hildebrandt notified the official about his opponent's escape point, making sure it was properly recorded on the scoreboard. His exceptional character is not all Hildebrandt possesses. The soon to be senior went 8-0 over the weekend, including giving Justin Portillo, an Iowa state champion, his only loss at the event via a 2-1 score. |
Five teams went through the pool competition unscathed: Brownsburg "A", Penn Gold, Best Trained, Perry Meridian "A" and Team Valley (which did not lose a single match on Saturday). Surprisingly, Archer and the Crusader Wrestling Club finished second in their pools. Archer fell to Brownsburg "A" 46-24 while the Crusaders fell to Perry Meridian "A" 49-12.
| Saturday's Pool Results: | Pool A | Pool B | Pool C | Pool D | Pool E |
Based upon their records in Saturday's pool rounds, 16 teams qualified for the 16-team Championship Bracket on Sunday. The remaining 12 teams participated in a 12-team Consolation Bracket.
Sunday's championship bracket in PDF
A few things need to be understood to explain the brackets. The two teams that lose in the semifinals compete for third and fourth place. The four teams that lose in the quarterfinals matches automatically go into a four-team bracket to decide 5th through 8th places. Teams that lose their first match go to an eight-team bracket to decide 9th to 16th place. The losing teams in the consolation semifinals meet to determine 11th and 12th places, and the consolation finals determines who finishes 9th and 10th. Hence, unlike tournament formats usually seen in Louisiana, teams that lose in the first round, regardless of whether that loss comes from the best team in the field, can only merit a 9th place finish. The same rules apply to the consolation bracket.
(Scores in blue link to match pages with photographs.)
In the consolation bracket The Tiger Wrestling Club took first place with a 55-30 victory over the New Orleans Wrestling Club. The Northshore Wrestling club placed fourth, the Live Oak Wrestling Club placed 8th and the Wrestling Academy of Louisiana placed 11th.
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| 2nd place in the consolation bracket - New Orleans Wrestling Club |
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| Sadly, this was the last scheduled wrestling event in Louisiana for Brusly's Kendon Kayser. The two-time Division III state champion will be moving to Stillwater, Oklahoma, for his junior and senior years. Aside from his state championships Kayser has titles from the Louisiana Classic, the Ken Cole, the South Walton Border Wars, the Brusly Invitational (twice), the Greater Baton Rouge Championships (twice) and the St. Michael Warrior Open (twice). The photos above are from his match with Tate's Daniel Pigg, which Kayser won 7-1. In his other six matches Kayser won via scores of 12-4, 8-4, 6-2 and falls in 1:46, 3:07, 0:31.. |
This list is limited to those who wrestled at least four matches during the competition.
Please send the names of anyone the editor missed that belongs in this group to: editor@lawrestlingnews.com
 1969: After the Civil War, ex-Union Colonel John Henry Thomas (John Wayne) and ex-Confederate Colonel James Langdon (Rock Hudson) lead two disparate groups of people through strife-torn Mexico. |
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| Photo 1: Kelly Giewat was just one of the New Orleans Wrestling Club Moms who helped the tournament run very efficiently; Photos 2 and 3) One could not tell that Alex Cottey of Perry Meridian just lost a match to the NOWC's Colby Queyrouze. Cottey, who will be entering the 8th-grade this fall, weighs about 78 pounds (when wet), but has plenty of "game."; Photo 4: Perry Meridian B teammates earning a Website photograph; Photo 5: a rare moment, according to one of his coaches, when Pierce Williams of the Crusader Wrestling Club is quiet. |
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