Month: November 2016

By SHANNON HEATON
Northeast Florida Matmen
JACKSONVILLE — The last time that Fletcher won the Gateway Conference championship, the Senator seniors were freshmen.

And they’re wanting to get back on top. For them, and for both the honorable-mention listed (in the preseason team poll listed here) Senators and #6 Bishop Kenny, the journey began Wednesday night, with Fletcher taking seven bonus-point wins en route to a 40-33 victory in the season-opener not only for both teams, but for the Northeast coverage area as a whole.

“This year, we’ve got a lot of seniors; a couple of them were sick and out, but this is their year to do something,” Senators coach David Harrison said. “We want other people to know that we’re here. We are no longer satisfied with just one kid going to state. Minimum, we can get three kids there.

“We’re not here to play second fiddle to anybody.”

After spotting the Crusaders an early 3-0 lead, the Senators won three of the next four contested matches, with an additional forfeit, to generate a 23-9 cushion behind falls from Bryce Bednarski (220), Bradley Lonergan (113) and a tech fall for Trent Dalldorf (120). Ivante White (132) added another pin two matches later.

Bishop Kenny would rally behind a bit of a run of its own in the middle weights, with four falls between 126 and 152 coming from Jack Delaney (126), Andrew Slade (138), Joey Cusick (145) and Sid Madison (152). Madison’s fall gave the Crusaders a 33-29 lead with two weights to go.

“Give (Kenny coach) Paul (Schloth) credit, he had some good kids coming in,” Harrison said of the Crusader middles. “We were just trying to fill holes and wrestle some kids up.”

A pair of Senator seniors closed down the dual for good, however, as Owen Beining (160) won by tech fall in the third period and Julion Fix (170) clinched the victory with a first-period pin.

“This was good, it was what they needed,” Schloth said of his team. “We need to be woken up by another team. We have kids that have got to make weight, but no excuses — they were tough, and it was a good match.

“Like I told the kids, there were some guys who did what we expected, some I felt good about and some I wasn’t so impressed by. But it will all even out in the end.”

Match-by-match results from the dual can be found on our Duals page here and, in a first this year, on the Orlando Sentinel’s dual results page here. Because of the late start of the dual, results could not be sent in time to make print deadlines for the Florida Times-Union, and they will be sent Thursday with expected publication in Friday’s paper.

Both teams will compete next on Saturday at the North Florida Duals, hosted by Bishop Snyder. Rounds for that event are expected to be announced on Friday here.

We have our first dual result reported on the site that isn’t within the north Florida coverage area, with a big h/t to Brant Parsons, who got the results from one of the two coaches involved.

Just the first of hopefully hundreds of duals this year. It’s on our Statewide drop-down tab on the Duals page. Or go here to check it out!

We added another club tonight for the new club starting at Nease High School. If your club is not on our Clubs page (which is one of the drop-downs under the Schedule tab on the main page), get your information to me. I am sure there are several that aren’t on our list.

We are still waiting on schools down in the south that have already scheduled events this week, in order to start filling the statewide duals page. We’ll definitely have some by Thursday, when the Northwest starts up its competitive season – we’ll have their duals on the Northeast page as well, under the statewide page.

If you have Twitter, be sure to follow @NEFloridaMatmen Wednesday night, as we’ll be live-tweeting the dual between HM Fletcher and #6 Bishop Kenny.

The I Own Florida state series for youth wrestling begins with regional competitions throughout the state this weekend. In the northeast, the series begins at Yulee. I’ve attached the flyer here –> YULEE IOF FLYER Contact Doug Youmans (email and cell noted on flyer) for more details.

Forty-six for forty-six.

The journey began in April. APRIL. On the 19th of that month, we got our first Northeast schedule for the 2016-17 season (if you’re scoring at home, it was Creekside — which I take as an article of faith that they’ll be first). Today, we got our last two. Atlantic Coast came in last night and was posted a little bit ago, and now, our last one — Bradford — is in hand.

And the season hasn’t had a dual, at least within the area, wrestled yet. We did better than last year, on that front.

OK. New events for the Tornadoes this year begin with the Battle on the Border at Yulee on January 7. This year’s group wasn’t at Terry Parker’s duals events last year, as I recall, so the Army Duals on January 13-14 and Parker Duals on January 27-28 are new to this group, as is the Clay Rotary on February 3-4.

The Tornadoes have just one event to which they are returning from last year, that being Columbia’s Tiger Duals on December 17.

Bradford has a few midweek events on the calendar, starting its season on December 13 with a four-team event that Yulee is hosting (which I didn’t have until today) and includes Georgia teams Charlton County and Glynn Academy. The Tornadoes will host Yulee and Interlachen on January 10, and will travel to Interlachen for the Rams’ event (including FSDB) on the 18th. Bradford will host Raines on the 23rd as well.

So, who’s NEXT? The season. The season is next.

We have our 45th schedule, with Atlantic Coast coming in last night (for some weird reason, been afflicted with the tireds really early in the evening and I had already repaired to bed).

There are four items on the Stingrays’ schedule thus far, and the Mack brothers — Montavis and Montaque — are going to be trying to fill them in. Coaches have their email addresses, but they’ve got lots of openings. I gave them some ideas on how they could fill out more items.

Atlantic Coast will be at this weekend’s Optimist Invitational, hosted by Terry Parker on Friday and Saturday. They will also be at Columbia’s Tiger Duals in Lake City on December 17.

In January, the Stingrays have a road dual at Nease on the 11th, and will compete in the Gateway Conference meet at Sandalwood on the 20th and 21st. AC also has a dual meet at First Coast scheduled for February 8.

So that’s our 45th schedule. Bradford, you are on the clock. We’ve emailed the AD as well as coach. We want 100%.

Hayden Good (Bartram Trail ’15) didn’t have much time off after completing his second year as a member of the Johns Hopkins football team. After the Blue Jays fell 28-21 to Mount Union on Saturday in the second round of the NCAA Division III football playoffs, Good suited up for the Hopkins wrestlers as they competed in the Grapple in the Garden combined high school and college event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Competing at 285 with literally no time off in between sports, Good lost by fall in 4:35 to NYU’s Santino Pelusi as Hopkins fell by a 27-13 count to the #16 team in Division III, and lost by fall in 2:40 to Allan Beattie as part of Hopkins’ 55-0 loss to #3 Pittsburgh-Johnstown.

A full recap of Good and his team’s day can be found here: http://www.hopkinssports.com/sports/m-wrestl/recaps/112716aaa.html

http://firstcoastvarsity.com/news/799/high-school-wrestling-2016-17-five-teams,-wrestlers-to-watch/

Very big picture. This is what they asked me to present, paragraphs on five teams and five individuals not otherwise on those five teams. FTU will have a wrestling “Super 5” team ranking each week, I believe on Thursdays. Plus results that come here will also go there.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/highschool/os-sp-hs-wrestling-season-preview-1127-20161127-story.html

Worth your attention.

Slight exaggeration. One of the digits, though, is accurate.

Twitter fans will like this. We’ve added what hopefully is our final Twitter account, @FlaMatmen, in an effort for that account to be identified by the statewide wrestling community as a way to communicate results and the like.

The live-tweeting will still be done, with one likely exception in February, under the @NEFloridaMatmen account. Stories will still publish under the @NEFloridaMatmen and @NWFLAMatmen accounts; they will also be published to @FlaMatmen.

We’re going to use @FlaMatmen to attempt to get results sent to us. In light of some recent developments, how successful we will be is an unknown. But. We will remain freely searchable, without paywall or subscription. I committed to that three years ago and I still hold true to that for the Matmen sites, for as long as they are ongoing.