What to know from Day 2 of OHSAA Perry District wrestling
PERRY TWP. — In both Garfield-Rootstown district championship matches Saturday, the G-Men prevailed with junior Keegan Sell snagging his third consecutive district title and senior Hunter Andel making it two straight.
The Rovers brought home their own hardware.
The team trophy.
After finishing a distant third a year ago behind champion South Range and runner-up Waynedale, Rootstown wrestling captured Saturday's Perry District title by a sizable margin with 141 points. (Waynedale, the district runner-up for the second straight season, had 97 points while South Range had 96.5.)
"We all scored, all 11 [district qualifiers], so that was good," Rovers coach Craig Wise said. "We got better today. A couple of the sophomores, you watched Tristen [McKibben] and Nick [Malek] get better right in front of your eyes."
The Rovers' six state qualifiers included two district runners-up (seniors Cody Coontz at 165 and Lane McKenzie at 190), two third-place finishers (senior Dylan Wise at 144 and McKibben at 157) and two fourth-place finishers (junior Will McEwuen at 113 and Malek at 132). For all the expectations Rootstown has shouldered all season, Saturday marked the first state berth for five of the six, Coontz being the lone exception.
"It means a lot," McKenzie said. "I'm really excited to get to go. I've never been there before and to wrestle on those mats, we're really excited. It means a lot to all of us."
Speaking of lofty expectations, both Andel and Sell have carried the same weight this season, and both excelled Saturday.
Battling McKenzie, the wrestler who took away his shot at a Portage County Tournament title, Sell was stellar as he was all tournament, winning his third straight district championship with three pins and a major decision.
"I just wrestled like any other match," Sell said. "Regardless of if I lost to him already or not, at the end of the day, it's just another match. You take one match at a time."
As for Andel, his rematch with Coontz, a bout Andel won 3-2 when they met in a dual meet earlier this season, was somehow just as good as that late December meeting.
After a scoreless opening two periods, with Andel riding Coontz out in the second, Andel scored an escape to start the third, but Coontz took the lead right back with an impressive shot. While Andel knotted the score at two, Coontz seemed to have leverage entering the final 15 seconds, before Andel worked his way on top of Coontz for the winner with roughly four ticks left.
"I've drilled that position a lot, especially in the different places I wrestled, and I kind of just felt where to go and I knew what to do in that crackdown position," Andel said. "It was a great match. Definitely was looking to put more points on the board, but he's a good opponent."
Portage County overcomes shaky start
After an up-and-down start to the district tournament, including numerous returning state qualifiers sent to the consolation bracket, things brightened considerably for Portage County's Division III wrestlers.
The fun started toward the latter half of Saturday's semifinals.
After Portage County started the semifinals 0-3, local wrestlers went 5-0 to finish the round, including Andel and Coontz at 165, McKenzie and Sell at 190 and Mogadore senior Tyler Shellenbarger snagging his second state berth at 215. Whereas Shellenbarger lost his opening match at Garfield Heights in each of the past three seasons, forcing him to battle through the consolation bracket, he stayed in the championship bracket this year, winning his first three matches via pin, all in 2:34 or less, en route to runner-up honors.
The blood round was even sweeter for Portage County.
The three Portage County wrestlers who fell in the semifinals, Rootstown's Will McEwuen (113), Crestwood's JP Wrobel (126) and the Rovers' Nick Malek (132), all bounced back with blood-round wins.
That marked the third straight season in which Wrobel, a junior, prevailed in the blood round to make state.
"I felt I wrestled pretty [well]," Wrobel said. "I mean I can't really have that loss dwell on me too much, because it's the postseason and losses happen and [I] just can't let it dwell and just got to have short-term memory and wrestle my style."
The great stories continued for Portage County throughout the blood round, with Wise (150) earning his first state berth after going 1-2 at Garfield Heights a year ago, and McKibben clinching his first trip to the Schottenstein Center after coming one match shy last season.
"Tristen drills with Cody Coontz every day, so he has a good guy to wrestle in practice every day," McKenzie said. "Cody pushes him and got him a lot better."
While McKibben topped Waterloo senior Justin Fox in an all-Portage County third-place match at 157, it was hard for the Vikings to be too upset. After all, Fox bounced back from a quarterfinal loss to battle his way through three successful consolation decisions to qualify for state.
"It just shows you like I want to be here," Fox said. "I want to be going on to one more week of my high school career and hopefully the podium next."
The third decision, in the blood round to clinch state, might have been the greatest as he took on Crestview's A.J. Coppersmith, who Fox lost to by one at the Eastern Ohio Wrestling League Championships, and got behind him for two to win it in overtime, 5-3.
"He went to his bread and butter," Vikings coach John Foster said. "He likes those inside ties. He likes that under hip. He's not a kid that's going to come after [you with] crazy, lightning speed and get in on your legs, and he went straight to what he knew."
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: OHSAA Perry District wrestling: 11 Portage County wrestlers make state
