New Palestine’s Tyler Lavin battles with Greenfield-Central’s Cade Zuber.
Mike Brown | For The Daily Reporter
By Brady Extin | Daily Reporter
NEW PALESTINE — Conference and sectional seeding implications may have been on the line on Wednesday night inside New Palestine gymnasium, but neither of those were the focus for both Greenfield-Central and New Palestine wrestling teams.
Greenfield-Central walked away with two victories over their county rival. The boys defeated the Dragons by a score of 46-31, and the girls won 18-12.
“Duals like this are everything because they’re what’s best for the sport. A rivalry match right down the street, fans can travel, kids and parents know each other. This is it to me,” Greenfield-Central head coach Josh Holden said. “We’re not even looking ahead. Yeah, it’s important for seeding, but this is what I like. Duals like this are fun.”
New Palestine head coach Scot Dawson expressed a similar sentiment.
“That’s the gist of it right there,” Dawson added. “We talked before the meet that state titles and conference titles aren’t won on December 7th, but we also knew that it would have implications when it comes to seeding. That crossed our mind, but we just wanted to come out and see what we had.”
With the boys meet starting at the 106-pound class, the Dragons were able to jump out to an early 21-0 lead before Greenfield-Central stormed back.
“They have tough kids at 113 and 120 and so do we. We knew they were going to be good matches, and they were,” Holden said. “A move here or there, something goes your way, and those matches could be different. We like wrestling good kids. We like to go out and wrestle teams like this and kids like that.”
After a forfeit by G-C at 106 pounds, in two of the highly anticipated matchups of the evening Cole Vandygriff defeated Jett McGuire (113) by decision 8-4, and Bryce Doss pinned Lincoln Parsons (120). Tyler Lavin followed them up with a pin of his own over G-C’s Cade Zuber (126).
“That’s going to be the key to our success. Those are our best kids, so they’re going to have to carry us,” Dawson added. “Some of our middleweights lack a little experience, but we’ll get that along the way, and be ready come sectional time.”
Not something in line with his normal coaching philosophy, Holden has expressed to his team the importance of pinning people this season. The Cougars did just that to earn the come-from-behind victory.
After falling behind 21-0, the Cougars reeled off seven straight wins, including six by fall.
“A lot of it has to do with where you start, where you’ve got your experience, and where you’ve got your pinners. There’s just a part of our lineup that likes to pin people. It’s completely against my philosophy of wrestling, actually. I was never good at that, and I’m not good at teaching it, but we just have a group of kids that work at it, and like pinning people,” Holden said. “It’s exciting, it’s like hitting a home run in baseball. You get a pin and your team cheers, the fans cheer, so to them, they want to go out and pin people. It’s good though because then we can get down and make up for some of our younger guys.”
Dylan Luther (132), Kannon Zuber (138), Cohen Hager (145), Zeke Holden (152), Clay Guenin (170), and Silas Frye (182) all picked up pins. John Ubelhor added a 12-1 major decision win over New Palestine’s Gabe Flick (160) to put the meet out of the Dragons’ reach.
“We’re young, and I like our fight. We’re just looking to improve each day,” Dawson said. “That was all experience versus inexperience. Greenfield had some really solid, experienced kids there, and we knew where they were going to be tough. Coach Holden has done a great job building that program.”
On the girls side, this time, it was a New Palestine forfeit that gave the Cougars an early lead and the eventual win.
Following the forfeit, the two teams traded pins the rest of the way.
To start things off, the teams split two matches at 132 pounds. New Palestine’s Sydney DeLois pinned Molly Hutchinson, and G-C’s Abi Elliott responded by pinning Jillian Champ.
Madisyn Covington was able to tie things back up for the Dragons after pinning Chloe Rafalco (145), but Ella Harpold was able to secure the victory for the Cougars with a first-round pin over Julia Champ (170).
