Vote for Livingston Daily Athlete of the Week (Feb. 20-25, 2023)
I had been working in this business for 30 years before I covered my first wrestling team finals in 2011 in Battle Creek.
In my Flint Journal days, we had someone else assigned to cover the big wrestling tournaments, while I was (shocker) our hockey guy.
Watching the grand march that day at Kellogg Arena, I realized I had been missing out on one of the great traditions in high school sports all those years.
I’ve made up for it ever since, getting to the team finals more often than not. It never gets old watching the teams enter the arena to Queen’s “We are the Champions.” It almost makes me want to get out there on the mat, except I remember that wrestling was my worst sport in gym class. And I’m 60 years old now, so there’s that.
Because Hartland reached the state championship match and Fowlerville made the quarterfinals for the first time in 25 years, I was able to enjoy four grand marches and all the other pomp and circumstance of the team wrestling finals last weekend in Kalamazoo.
A nice touch is that the coaches always wear suits for the championship round. If you’ve packed your suit for the trip, you want to make sure it gets worn.
Two of the wrestlers I covered in Kalamazoo are on this week’s Livingston Daily Athlete of the Week ballot.
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Vincent Cox, Hartland wrestling
Cox got three first-period pins at heavyweight in the state team finals at Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo. He took 30 seconds in the state quarterfinals to pin Temperance Bedford’s Chase Norbury, who pinned Cox during the regular season. His pin of Zane Panchula of Rockford in the semifinals took only 32 seconds. Cox, ranked No. 7 at his weight by Michigan Grappler, won a district championship and was third at regionals.
Dalton Daniel, Fowlerville wrestling
Daniel pinned Austin Morse at 138 pounds in 1:52, giving Fowlerville a 16-0 lead over Gaylord in the third match during the state Division 2 quarterfinals. Gaylord came back to win, 45-28. Daniel has won his last nine matches, winning district and regional championships at 126.
John McHugh, Brighton swimming
McHugh repeated as the KLAA 100-yard backstroke champion with a time of 51.43 seconds, winning by 1.74 seconds. He was also fourth in the 50 freestyle in 21.83 and was on the winning 200 medley relay team.
Kirsten Patterson, Howell bowling
Patterson had the highest finish at regionals by any Livingston County bowler, placing third in the tournament at Century Bowl in Waterford. Patterson had a six-game total of 1,024 pins, rolling a 232 in her final game. She helped Howell have the highest team finish in the county, a fourth-place showing that was one spot shy of qualifying for the state tournament.
Griffin Stahl, Pinckney diving
Stahl took down the oldest record on Pinckney’s board with a second-place score of 378.3 points in the SEC White meet. The previous 11-dive record was 376.0 set by John Weeks in 1994.
Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillKhan.
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Vote for Livingston Daily Athlete of the Week (Feb. 20-25, 2023)
