2022 LHSAA State Wrestling Championships February 11th-12th, 2022 Raising Cane's River Center Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Place	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
Podium
Name	Luc Johnson	Chris Miller	Daniel Thomas	Destin Pitre	David Massicot	Malachai Benetrix
School	Basile	Brusly	St. Louis	Thomas Jefferson	John Curtis	De la Salle
Seed	1	2	3	7	NS	4
Class	11	11	12	11	9	9
Final Record*	27-4	27-10	13-17	11-16	9-16	19-22

*    Records include all wins but only losses to Louisiana wrestlers.  Forfeits and defaults are not counted.

Basile's Luc Johnson placed third in 2020 and second in 2021.  It could be argued that the junior had the best 2021-22 season of all Division III wrestlers.  That argument can be said of a few others if one reads all of this website, but Johnson is certainly on that list.

Senior Synopsis

Basile junior Luc Johnson won the Ken Cole Memorial, the Jacob McMillan Memorial and the Brusly Invitational.  He placed second in the Louisiana Classic, falling to the St. Paul defending Division I state champion Jacob Houser (D1 1st).  In that event he defeated Parkway’s David Viers (D1 3rd) and Acadiana’s Luke Lafleur (D1 3rd seed).  In the Ken Cole he defeated two Division II runners-up (Shaw's Hayden Tassin and Brandt Babineaux of Teurlings Catholic) and a third-place finisher (Rummel's Cameron Gandolfi).  He would have had a better record aside from one weekend at Brother Martin in December.  At the Trey Culotta Invitational he lost to East Ascension’s Gregory Walker via a fall, and twice, by two points both times, to Brother Martin’s Rory Horvath.  (Horvath is someone to keep an eye on in 2022-23.)  After that, his record was 18-1, with his sole loss coming from Houser in the LACL finals.  A year before, Johnson placed second to Brusly’s Kaul Kayser in a 5-2 match.  As a freshman, Johnson placed third.

One of Johnson’s wins this season was a 1:06 fall over Brusly’s Chris Miller in the Brusly Invitational semifinals.  In 2021 Miller placed fourth in Division III as the seventh seed, upending the third and fourth seeds en route to the consolation finals.  This season Miller was 24-9 entering the state championships.  All of his losses, aside from the one to Johnson, were at 145 lbs. or 152 lbs.  And they did not come from just anyone.  They included Live Oak’s Rayden Ingram (D1 1^st), Voltaire Sanders of Zachary (D1 4^th) and Sean King of John Curtis (D3 1^st).    

Anything other than a Johnson-Miller finals rematch would have been very surprising.  Miller had two falls over third-seeded Daniel Thomas of St. Louis, so there was a fairly large gap between the second seed and the rest of the field.  De la Salle freshman Malachi Benetrix was seeded fourth.

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Quarterfinals

No surprises were had during the three first-round and the quarterfinals matches.

Semifinals

De la Salle freshman Malachi Benetrix, the fourth seed, gave Johnson more of a match than he probably would have liked, only falling to the top seed 8-2.  Miller recorded his third fall of the season over Thomas. 

(1) Luc Johnson (BAS) defeated (4) Malachai Bentrix (DLS) 8-2

(2) Chris Miller (BRU) pinned (3) Daniel Thomas (StL) in 1:38

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Championship Consolation Rounds

The gap between 2^nd and 3^rd notwithstanding, Thomas took third easily, rebounding from his semifinal loss to Miller with falls in 2:58 and 3:45.  The 3:45 one was against seventh-seeded Destrin Pitre of Thomas Jefferson, who unexpectedly took out Benetrix in the consolation semifinals.  Things did not get any better for the Cavalier freshman who gave the state champion his closest match, though.  Unseeded John Curtis Patriot David Fra’Massicot, also a freshman, took out fifth-seeded Jacob Goodridge of St. Michael 3-2, and after a loss to Thomas, rebounded to take fifth-place via a 49 second pin over Benetrix. 

(3) Daniel Thomas (StL) pinned (7) Destin Pitre (TJ) in 3:45 to place 3rd

David Francis Massicot (JC) pinned (4) Malachi Benetrix (DLS) in 0:49 to place 5th

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Finals

About all Miller could do was last longer with Johnson than he did at the Brusly Invitational.  He did that, holding Johnson to a 2-0 first period but succumbing a little after a minute passed in the second.  Fourteen of the 17 opponents Johnson pinned before that, however, did not last as long. 

(1) Luc Johnson (BAS) pinned (2) Chris Miller (BRU) in 3:06

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