Fini

The Rebels of Vestavia Hills, Alabama, behind a strong upper weight line-up, captured their second consecutive South Walton Border Wars championship, outscoring Holy Cross of New Orleans 309 to 269.5.  Jesuit of New Orleans scored 252.5 points to place third.

Winning titles for Vestavia Hills were Hayden Hill (160 lbs.), George Dazzio (170 lbs.) and James Edwards (220 lbs.).  Zack Nelson was the Rebels' remaining finalist at 182 lbs.

Jesuit's Guy Patron, Jr., last year's OW in the upper weight classes, repeated as the 195 lbs. championship and was awarded a "Best Match" medal for his finals match.  Lincoln's 113 lbs. champion Michael Crowder won the "Best Match" medal for the lower weight classes via his semifinals "throw-fest" win over Luella, GA's Cameron Hunter.  The rest of the individual championships were won by Arnold (2), Columbia (2), Lincoln, Union Grove, GA, and Tampa Jesuit.

Vestavia Hills, AL - 1st	Holy Cross - 2nd	Jesuit - 3rd

Michael Crowder of Lincoln Guy Patron, Jr. of Jesuit

Best Match Award Winners

Holy Cross fared better than any Louisiana team since a star-studded Brusly won the first Border Wars in 2013.  The Tigers had runners-up in Jacob Spahn, Cole Clement, Joey Foret and Randel Amos.  Eleven of the twelve Tigers entered placed in the top eight spots.  Michael Lundin (106 lbs.) and Jake Rando (145 lbs.) placed fourth.

Jesuit improved from fourth last year to third place behind Patron's championship at 195 lbs., a runner-up spot for Nathan Koenig (138 lbs.), third-place finishes by Brandon Greer (160 lbs.) and Kyler Pisciotta (170 lbs.), and a fourth-place finish by Joseph Dupre (126 lbs.).  The Blues Jays also had eleven placers out of twelve entrants place in the top-eight.

Anthony Artalona of Tampa Prep. (145 lbs.) and Marcus Zeighler of Columbia (285 lbs.) were chosen the Outstanding Wrestler award winners.

Bragging Rights   For two years William Pickren of Arnold (nee South Walton) held bragging rights re the Border Wars in the Pickren household.  Winning the event in 2013 and 2014, he placed better than his older brother Cody (now at the University of Florida).  The torch has been passed, for this year at least, to the youngest Pickren, freshman Ethan, who won the 106 lbs. championship while William placed third at 126 lbs.

Final Team Scores

(All teams are from Florida unless noted otherwise)

NOTES:

Due to a lack of completed brackets, quarterfinals and semifinals scores are not available;

A lot of this article is understandably, the editor hopes, biased toward Louisiana wrestlers.  However, that had nothing to do with the poor quality of some of the photographs.  The editor submits that was caused by fatigue, trying to take photos on two to four matches at a time, singlet and mat color combinations and anything else with he can find fault aside from his new $2100 lens!

Back to Top