UIL state wrestling championships: Arlington Martin wins title plus more from area teams
For the first time since 2004, the Arlington Martin boys wrestling team hoisted the state championship trophy.
The Warriors won four championships Saturday night and held off Allen to claim the 6A state title at the Berry Center in Cypress, Texas at the UIL State Wrestling Championship. Martin finished with 190 1/2 points — just ahead of Allen’s 185.
Allen had won the past 14 state championship. The Warriors finished second in the last five years.
“We controlled our own destiny,” Martin coach Patrick Dunn said. “I believed in our kids, and I knew they were going to do it. The nerves were up and down. It was a tight race. Allen wrestled well, like they always do. I told our kids, you don’t control the score and you don’t control the clock, just wrestle. Just enjoy yourself, wrestle and whatever happens, happens.”
Martin won four individual championships: Isaak Arevalo, Nicholas Zamora, Grayson Carpenter and Ibraheem Ahmed.
Arevalo, a senior, won a third state title.
Zamora beat Allen’s Javin Jackson-Bey which helped in the team race — if the results of that were flipped, Allen would’ve been a state champion.
Ahmed won by an ultimate tiebreaker overtime, 3-2, at the 175-pound finals. He was the last Warrior to wrestle. His win gave Martin a 5 1/2 point lead but Allen had one wrestler left in Aiden Cooley at 190 pounds.
A win there would’ve given Allen the title, but he lost by a 3-1 decision to Klein’s Isaac Sheeren.
Martin girls take third place in Class 6A
The duo of Jania Dunigan and Camille Rainey helped the Lady Warriors bring home a team trophy.
Martin finished third in 6A with 56 points - just a 1 1/2 points ahead of Cypress Springs.
Jania Dunigan repeated as a state champion and finished with a perfect 45-0 record. Ranked No. 1 headed into the meet by WrestlingTexas.com, Dunigan pinned her way to the 126-pound finals. There, she beat Sarah Conner of Richardson Lake Highlands, who had only one loss by a 2-1 decision.
Teammate Camille Rainey won the 138-pound title by upsetting Anna Vogt of The Woodlands College Park — a defending state champion and 40-0 and coming into the finals.
Rainey got an 8-5 decision in the finals over Vogt keyed by two takedowns in the third period over the No. 1-ranked Vogt.
“It really pushed me to go out and wrestle my best,” said Rainey, whose only loss came to 5A 138-pound champion Taylin Silco of Lubbock Cooper. “Everyone knew I was the underdog and everyone thought she’d win, so it really put a fire in me to win.”
Azle girls takes second place in Class 5A
Behind a trio of finalists, Azle took second in the girls’ 5A title hunt.
The Lubbock Cooper won the title with 99 1/2 points while the Lady Hornets finished with 70 points in the first year under the guidance of Jayson Conger, who formerly was at Keller Timber Creek.
Mariah Dillard capped off her perfect season with a win in the 120-pound finals, beating Aniz Ramirez of Georgetown.
“I’ve been working hard for this and if finally happened,” Dillard. “I stayed calm and listened to my coach.”
Dillard was 42-0 and it was the third year in a row with a champion for the school. Annabelle Davis won last year while Pella LaFever took home a title in 2022.
Noah Kovach (100 pounds) and Alicen Dillard (138) were runners-up for the Lady Hornets. Davis was back at state this year but lost in the quarterfinals and went 1-2.
Even more state champs
Haslet Eaton, Burleson Centennial, Southlake Carroll and Arlington Seguin also had wrestlers on the top step of the podium on Saturday.
Xavier Rodela of Burleson Centennial was a repeat champion when he took first in Class 5A’s 126 with a 3-1 win over Keagan Sieracki of Salad. Rodela scored all three of his points in the second period and finished the year 27-3.
Neelie Parker became Eaton’s first state champion since Mattison Parker won in 2018. In the Class 6A 132-pound bracket, Parker beat Elizabeth Dyer of Fort Worth Paschal, 4-3. An escape and take down in the third made the difference — and flipped an earlier outcome when Dyer beat Parker in the 2-6A District meet.
Dylan Ota is Carroll’s first champion in two years and he won the 6A, 106 crown with a 6-3 decision over Dripping Springs’ Jackson Shipley. The sophomore finished 45-3 this season.
Perhaps the most improbable champion was E’Shawn Tolbert of Seguin. He was 7-2 heading to state but the senior won four in a row by the slimmest of margins to beat George Rodriguez of Uvalde, a defending state champion in the finals, 4-3.
Tolbert had a 5-4 win in the semifinals, a 7-6 win in the quarterfinals and won his first match, 8-6 — on an escape with 2 seconds left. He’s the school’s first-ever state champion, according to the wrestling program’s X account.
State Runners-up
The area had several other wrestlers reach the finals on Saturday and take second place.
Northwest’s Emma Graves, 5A 107
Eve Smith, Midlothian Heritage, 5A 165
Christina Faulk, Arlington Houston, 5A 235
Kevin Contreras, Grapevine, 5A 113
Rade Ostrander, Keller Timber Creek, 6A 215
