If high school wrestlers thought regional competition was tough last weekend, they can expect the competition, as Keegan Michael Key used to say on MADtv, taken to “a whole notha level” on Saturday.
And if they aren’t careful, they may learn the hard way the importance of those places they battled for last weekend.
Semistate competition at Evansville’s new Ford Arena and at New Castle High School are an opportunity for 19 Wabash Valley wrestlers to advance to the state finals, and there’s not an easy match left in any of their seasons.
Semistates feature 16 wrestlers at every weight, which means each wrestler advancing to the state finals will have to win his own four-man bracket — and, of course, there’s a regional champion in every one — before battling for the placings later in the day that will have a great deal to do with their chances of getting past the Friday night round in Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Feb. 17.
Not only, then, do Saturday’s wrestlers have to worry about their first-round opponents, but whom they might have to face in the second round — “the ticket round,” coach Gabe Cook of Terre Haute South explained, because winning in the second round is a wrestler’s ticket to the state finals.
South’s Tsali Lough is the only Wabash Valley regional champion and is working toward returning to the state finals, but even his road is tough. In rankings well before the state tournament — which are admittedly somewhat out of date — he’s one of five top-20 wrestlers in the 160-pound class at Evansville.
The only unranked regional champ at that weight, Forest Park’s Casey Abell, is the first-round opponent for Northview’s Brody Girton, but a win for Girton would probably mean a second-round match with Center Grove’s 10th-ranked Brock Warner. Warner didn’t win the Mooresville Regional, but he’s one of two wrestlers who have beaten Lough this season (a loss Lough avenged in the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference championship match).
Seth Seitzinger of Bloomington South is also ranked, but his two epic losses to Lough at the sectional and regional mean he’ll probably have to face fourth-ranked Jacob Underwood of Martinsville — he’s the one who beat Warner last week — in the “go round.”
Lough and unbeaten Swade Oser of Heritage Hills are the only ranked competitors in their respective 160-pound foursomes, but even if both of them punch their tickets with two early wins, the four-man battle for placings will be fierce.
“It’s a tough tournament,” Cook noted, “but Tsali’s a tough kid.”
South’s other two wrestlers Saturday, 132-pounder Phoenix Adams and 182-pounder Sam Cook, have even harder ways to go.
Cook, by virtue of finishing fourth last week, meets Evansville Mater Dei’s fourth-ranked and unbeaten Dalton Brandenstein right off the bat. Adams, third last week, meets unranked Edgar Chavez of Jasper in the first round — but if he advances, his ticket-round foe will almost certainly be unbeaten and defending state champion Neal Molloy of Danville, who would be in the discussion for the second-best wrestler in the state in any class.
(Jason Tsirtsis of Crown Point, who beat South’s P.J. Montgomery for a state championship last year, is ranked first in the nation in his weight class.)
“That’s why you want to win the regional,” Cook said of those draws. “With those other two guys we’re planning to leave it on the mat, take more risks than we would during the [regular] season.”
Other wrestlers with high hopes Saturday include Caleb Nicosin and Aaron See of Northview and Ben Bird of West Vigo.
Nicosin, who lost a five-overtime regional championship match last week, will have to beat Mater Dei’s Wyatt Seng and probably Franklin’s D.J. Smith to advance; See, ranked 14th near the end of the regular season, also opens against a Mater Dei wrestler (Evan Collins) but wouldn’t get a ranked wrestler in the second round either; and Bird meets Connor Talley of Franklin, then possibly 13th-ranked Elijah Curtley of Jeffersonville.
In addition to the three Braves, three Knights and the one Viking, there are J.J. Low and Ethan Edington of Terre Haute North and Joseph Gilham and Cory Orndorff of Sullivan — all fourth-place finishers last week, all facing a top-10 wrestler in their first-round matches — plus four Greencastle wrestlers and two from South Putnam at Evansville.
The Wabash Valley’s only wrestlers are New Castle, Alex Thomas of South Vermillion and Jared Paxton of Rockville, will be facing regional champions Nolan Feller of Franklin County and Dominique Robinson of Lawrence Central respectively.
Wabash Valley
high school wrestlers
At Evansville Semistate
106 — Caleb Nicosin, Northview (34-8) vs. Wyatt Seng, Evansville Mater Dei (23-6); J.J. Low, Terre Haute North (28-11) vs. Damon Kuhn, Evansville Reitz (40-2)
113 — Joseph Gilham, Sullivan (24-7) vs. Bailey LaHue, Corydon (37-2)
126 — Cory Orndorff, Sullivan (29-4) vs. Gideon Van Hook, Evansville Reitz (25-3)
132 — Phoenix Adams, Terre Haute South (16-8) vs. Edgar Chavez, Jasper (27-9)
160 — Aaron Langdon, Greencastle (24-14) vs. Swade Oser, Heritage Hills (51-0); Brody Girton, Northview (24-11) vs. Casey Abell, Forest Park (34-6); Tsali Lough, Terre Haute South (40-2) vs. Luke Terry, Eastern (Pekin) (25-12); Jesse Gardner, South Putnam (33-5) vs. Mahlon Parkinson, Evansville Mater Dei (29-7)
170 — Carter Lewis, Greencastle, vs. Austin Warren, Castle (37-3)
182 — Sam Cook, Terre Haute South (21-6) vs. Dalton Brandenstein, Evansville Mater Dei (39-0)
195 — Rudy Harris, South Putnam (36-3) vs. Caleb Cole, Scottsburg (23-4); Ben Bird, West Vigo (28-3) vs. Connor Talley, Franklin (28-8)
220 — Ben Hesler, Greencastle (32-3) vs. C.J. Andrey, Paoli (23-2); Aaron See, Northview (38-4) vs. Evan Collins, Evansville Mater Dei (26-9); Ethan Edington, Terre Haute North (22-17) vs. Jared Boehm, Heritage Hills (50-1)
285 — Will Mobley, Greencastle (27-9) vs. Nathan Wright, Evansville Mater Dei (36-1)
At New Castle Semistate
145 — Alex Thomas, South Vermillion (35-5) vs. Nolan Feller, Franklin County (36-4)
182 — Jared Paxton, Rockville (35-3) vs. Dominique Robinson, Lawrence Central (32-10)
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