Wrestlers Compete at Burwell and W-P
By: Morgan Bunner, a freshman at Leigh High School
The Clarkson-Leigh Wrestling Team had tough competition wrestling a lot of top-ranked teams and placing sixth overall at the Burwell Dual Invitational on Friday, January 8th. The 10 Patriot wrestlers were part of a total of 132 wrestlers from 10 teams who competed that day. St. Paul, Ravenna, and Crofton-Bloomfield finished in the top 3 teams.
Freshman wrestler Dylan Higby had this to say:
“Going into the Burwell Tournament we knew it was going to be tough and all we could do was go in and wrestle our hardest.”
The Patriots were defeated in their first two duals of the day against St. Paul and Crofton-Bloomfield. But in the next two, they defeated Central Valley and Wood River. Finally, in the match-up for fifth place, they were defeated by Arcadia-Loup City.
The very next day on Saturday, January 9, the Patriot wrestlers headed to Wisner-Pilger.
At this invite, three Patriot wrestlers placed in the top 4.
Freshman Morgan Bunner placed fourth in the 113-weight class after falling to Jason Smutz from Scribner Snyder in the consolation match.
Jackson Koehn finished second in the 182-weight class after losing to Jacob Schoenauer from Omaha Bryan in the championship match.
Freshman Dylan Higby finished in first in the 132 lb weight class after defeating Michael Polivka from East Butler in the championship match.
“At the Burwell and Wisner tournaments, I felt our wrestlers gave a very good effort,” assistant coach Tony Horacek said. “We are young, so our efforts do not always result in wins, but we are improving and moving in the right direction. They wrestled hard and competed well. We hope to get healthy and continue to work hard at practice so we can continue to improve through the rest of the season.”