Middle School State: Surprises or Standout Performances?

[MatTime]

Now that MS State is completed, were there any surprise finishes or did any soon to be high schoolers have standout performances? How well did the pin system predict the top kids?

[datdude]

The 144 (Jared Guevara) from Whiteland was very impressive. He’s gonna be a good one. Only a 7th grader.  

[Hereforthe2s]

At 106 the PIN rating had the finals calculated correct with Ducking and Brown facing off. Ducking was seeded 1st and Brown 2nd, Brown ended winning. 
 

Grafton-Hodgetts had a great tournament.  He took 3rd and was seeded 8th. He had a great match with Ducking in the quarter finals only losing 2-0. The only 2 offensive points scored on him were the 2 in the loss to Ducking in the seven matches he had on his way to 3rd.  

Edited February 6 by Hereforthe2s

[MatTime]

The pin rating seemed to have worked well then. I was concerned originally because I had heard that only the top 8 athletes would be seeded off of pin and the remainder would be randomized. Fortunately that did not appear to happen. 

 

There were some kids that made a great run. Hunter Pierson at 85 had a great tournament. Lincoln Hinchman is something special. A few kids repeated to become multi MS state champs. Good stuff. 

 

Saw that some kids forfeited out after losing a match. Hope the athletes are ok but hope that does not become a trend. 

 

Center Grove did a great job hosting and the tourney was well ran for the most part. Started at 9 ended at about 4 or so. Pretty good in my opinion.  

[Coach Coop]

10 hours ago, datdude said:

The 144 (Jared Guevara) from Whiteland was very impressive. He’s gonna be a good one. Only a 7th grader.  

14u Folkstyle national runner up 2 weeks ago, MS State champ this weekend, and he is only 12. Great competitor and a great kid. 

[datdude]

3 hours ago, Coach Coop said:

14u Folkstyle national runner up 2 weeks ago, MS State champ this weekend, and he is only 12. Great competitor and a great kid. 

He’s though. He certainly impressed me. 

[TripleB]

Madison had their their first 2 MS State champs in their program’s history 

 

Brendan Bentz - seeded 4th - won 138

Garrett Deuser - seeded 3rd - won 175. G had a crazy semi-final match, was down 7-0 and won 14-10

 

Madison had a solid day w 2 more top 4 finishers in Segar Ralston finishing 4th at 132 and Grayson Hughes also 4th at 150. 

 

[gazoni]

On 2/6/2024 at 8:42 AM, MatTime said:

The pin rating seemed to have worked well then. I was concerned originally because I had heard that only the top 8 athletes would be seeded off of pin and the remainder would be randomized. Fortunately that did not appear to happen. 

 

There were some kids that made a great run. Hunter Pierson at 85 had a great tournament. Lincoln Hinchman is something special. A few kids repeated to become multi MS state champs. Good stuff. 

 

Saw that some kids forfeited out after losing a match. Hope the athletes are ok but hope that does not become a trend. 

 

Center Grove did a great job hosting and the tourney was well ran for the most part. Started at 9 ended at about 4 or so. Pretty good in my opinion.  

There were several athletes dealing with illness and I heard at 100 the #1 Tate St. Laurent was dealing with the flu and #2 Connor Maddox had a really bad ankle injury.  Both of them forfeited on their last match, hope for a speedy recovery for both.

[MatTime]

How the Ranked Athletes Did at MS State:

 

1. Case Bell - DNC (2x Champ)

2. MJ Staples - DNC (won a qualifer but did not compete)

3. Caesar Salas - DNC (2x Champ)

4. Jeremy Carver - Champion at 95 (2x Champ)

5. Tate St. Laurent - 6th at 100 (forfeited 5th/6th match after losses to UR athletes)

6. Case Bridge - DNC

7. Connor Maddox - DNP - Medical Forfeit after 3rd round loss to UR athlete

8. Colin Strayer - Champion at 120 (2x Champ)

9. Kamron Hazelett - DNC (qualified but did not compete)

10. Traevon Ducking - 2nd at 106 (Lost to #20)

11. Lincoln Hinchman - Champion at 132

12. Anthony Zuranski - 2nd at 113 (Lost to #17)

13. Colton Wiseman - Champion at 70 (2x Champ)

14. Alex Huddleston - DNC (2x Champ)

15. Patrick Dowty - 5th at 113 (Losses to #17 and UR Malone)

16. Dallas Rosenbarger - 3rd at 113 (Loss to #12)

17. Noel Verduzco - Champion at 113 (2x Champ)

18. Spenser McCammon - DNC

19. Zavier Acuna - DNC

20. Daniel Brown - Champion at 106

21. Bo Jackson - 2nd at 132 (Loss to #11)

22. Sebastion Garcia - Champion at 100

23. Haedyn Cochran - Champion at 80 (2x Champ)

24. Cameron Schofield - 4th at 90 (Losses to UR athletes)

25. Xavier Flores - DNP at 120 (Losses to UR athletes)

 

How the Honorable Mentions Did: 

Nicolas Freeze - 7th at 100 (Loss to #5 and UR athletes)

Gavin Brown - 6th at 126 

Lincoln Underwood - Champion at 126

William Grafton Hodgett - 3rd at 106  (Loss to #10)

Ethan Alvarez - DNP (Loss to UR Freeze)

Kolten Land - DNC

Marcus Malone - 4th - 113 (Losses to #16 twice)

Elias Faith - DNC

Deacon Gibbs - 2nd at 85

Aiden Gooney - DNC

 

Some take aways:

-Ryan Hockaday should be listed in the rankings; his only loss was to the now 2x champ Strayer in a 6-3 decision. 

-Lincoln Underwood should probably be elevated to the rankings as he is a MS champion

-There are no representations in the rankings from the following weight classes: 138, 144, 150, 157, 165, 175, 190, 285, begging the questions of whether these classes are toss ups among the top few athletes or if the athletes are just not known well enough?

-113 looked to be the most hotly contested due to having the most ranked athletes competing for the title

-Cambden Hook, 2nd at 100, should be an honorable mention; decision over #5, loss to #22

 

 

[TripleB]

Aiden Goney is Ashton Goney, 3rd at 138, lost to some Bentz kid. 

[TripleB]

My kid, Brendan Bentz, won 138 and his teammate Garrett Deuser that won 175. They just don't wrestle a ton in the spring/summer b/c they are both also really good baseball players and play travel ball March - August.

 

They gathered some hardware this winter but not in notable USA Events

 

Brendan - won Bluegrass Nattys, won Music City Brawl Nattys, 2nd at Christmas Sparty individual and was undefeated in team duals, 1-2 at IHPO as an 8th grader, 3-4 at MS duals in Toledo. 

 

Garrett - won Bluegrass, won Sparty, undefeated in Sparty duals, and was runner up at Music City, he also went 6-1 at MS duals in Toledo. 

[Silence Dogood]

7 hours ago, TripleB said:

Aiden Goney is Ashton Goney, 3rd at 138, lost to some Bentz kid. 

I think it may be a combo of Ashton Goney and Aiden Flowers. Would be quite a wrestler.

[TripleB]

1 hour ago, Silence Dogood said:

I think it may be a combo of Ashton Goney and Aiden Flowers. Would be quite a wrestler.

You ain’t lying!!

[Mr. RIght]

I think Carver was a standout. Verduzco and Brown were both pretty impressive in pretty loaded weight classes.

Hazlett was a 2x Middle School Champ but an injury kept him out of it this year. 

I was hoping we would see Staples compete at 150, or around there, since they didn't let him wrestle Salas at 200.

Salas won 15U Tulsa 2 weeks before, pretty tough.

[MatTime]

Verduzco was my standout. Winning a bracket that has three pound for pound ranked kids in it is incredibly impressive. More so than walking through a bracket of unranked kids. Going through very talented Zuranski, Dowty, Rosenbarger, and Malone...winning that bracket is an accomplishment. Was a fun bracket to watch. Will be fun to watch those athletes at the high school level. 

[Slop Drop and Roll]

1 hour ago, MatTime said:

Verduzco was my standout. Winning a bracket that has three pound for pound ranked kids in it is incredibly impressive. More so than walking through a bracket of unranked kids. Going through very talented Zuranski, Dowty, Rosenbarger, and Malone...winning that bracket is an accomplishment. Was a fun bracket to watch. Will be fun to watch those athletes at the high school level. 

I agree. I watched 113, 120,126 the most. Noel definitely had a great day. The top 7 or 8 at 113 was really tough. A bunch of great wrestlers. To come out of that group as dominate as he was was very impressive. 

There was definitely a lot of contrast between each of those 3 weights. 113 was a lot of go go on the feet scoring. 120 which I felt was not as top end heavy( after strayer)  was pretty deep with tough kids. A lot more meat grinding mat wrestling. More lower scoring, and a ton of matches within a couple points.

126 had some tough kids as well and lot of big moves and falls. 
My kid was at 120 so I watched it the closest outside of my other coaching duties. 
I thought the pin worked out pretty well. Hockaday was the outlier. I posted about him sitting out a couple years it looked like so it had him like 14 he was runner up. But Strayer was 1 finished 1st, Hockaday was 14 got 2nd, Mason 3rd finished 3rd, Cooper was 11 got 4th, Janes was 4 got 5th, Jones was 6th got 7th, Moore ( my kid) was 7 got 6th, and Nekolite was 13 and got 8th so I would say in this instance it was seeded fairly accurately according to placement. 

I thought Cooper, Mason, Jones, being 7th graders wrestled really well. 
Great sportsmanship at 120. Physical wrestling but nobody took it personally. Good group of kids and coaches. 

[CoachFrepan]

Brownsburg’s Colton Gipson was a man among boys at 165.  3 TF’s and 2 Majors.  The last 2 rounds with his head completely wrapped to control the hash above his eye.  Need to have a few bigger boys on the list.