Business as usual.<\/p>\n
That was the rallying cry for the Kentwood High wrestling team Wednesday night, which felt the heat from surging Kent-Meridian, but was able to cool off the Royals 40-25 in a South Puget Sound League North Division dual meet.<\/p>\n
Kent-Meridian was coming off a team title from the Liberty Invitational on Saturday. On Wednesday night, however, the Royals couldn\u2019t solve Kentwood, which received pins from Ruben Navejas (112), Teddy Zografos (130), Matt Gordon (145) and Nathan Herrick (275) en route to the victory.<\/p>\n
The Royals hung with the Conquerors until the third-to-last match of the evening, when Herrick dispatched of K-M freshman Alex Hawkins in 49 seconds. Herrick\u2019s pin gave the Conks a 34-19 advantage with two matches to go, essentially sealing the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to wrestle my match and take care of business, the rest would just take care of itself,\u201d said Herrick, who took third at state last year and who improved to 10-5 for the season.<\/p>\n
The rest did indeed take care of itself as the Conquerors improved to 2-2 in North Division dual meets. Kent-Meridian dropped to 2-2 with the loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought we had them tonight, they just came out on top,\u201d lamented K-M\u2019s Andrew Smith, who worked one of the Royals\u2019 two pins of the night, dominating Kentwood\u2019s Brandon Miller in 1:55.<\/p>\n
Kentwood also received a solid return from 119-pounder Hayden Peterson, who suffered a mild concussion a little more than two weeks ago during a tournament. Competing in his first match since the injury, Peterson worked over K-M\u2019s Alec Moss to a 16-0 technical fall in the night\u2019s opening match.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt great to be out there again,\u201d said Peterson, a state participant two years ago who improved to 14-6 for the season.<\/p>\n
Kentwood won 9 of the 14 matches of the night, the quickest of which came from returning state champion Ruben Navejas. Navejas, who typically wrestles at 103 pounds, bumped up to 112 for the night\u2019s final match and pinned K-M\u2019s Carrillo Massagli in 39 seconds to improve to 21-1 this winter.<\/p>\n
Navejas won the 103-pound state crown last year and it was anticipated he would take on K-M lightweight Jesus Valdez, who took fifth at state a year ago. Instead, Valdez remained at 103 and did what he has done all season \u2013 win. Appearing to be in state-tournament form, Valdez pinned Kentwood freshman Jamiel Jackson in 2:47 to improve his overall season mark to 22-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew we had a shot (to beat Kentwood),\u201d said K-M coach Todd Owens. \u201cI knew we had a shot at it. We needed a couple key turnarounds and we were pretty close at 145 and 152.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kentwood led from start to finish. The Conquerors bolted out to a 15-0 advantage behind wins from Peterson, Davinder Saini and Zografos. K-M followed with wins from Nguyen and Andrew Smith to cut the deficit to 15-9, but were unable to keep up the momentum. The pivotal point of the meet came at 145 pounds, where K-M freshman Joshua Smith, the younger brother of Andrew, took a 9-4 lead over Kentwood\u2019s Matt Gordon. Gordon, however, proved to have a bit more left in the tank, working a pin midway through the second period.<\/p>\n
Kentwood\u2019s Alex Hough followed with a hard-fought win over K-M\u2019s Thomas Kemp, 5-1. The two wins from Gordon and Hough were vital, Kentwood coach Ken Sroka said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big highlights of the meet were Matt Gordon and Alex Hough. Once (Gordon) got under control, even though he was down, he got a fall,\u201d said Sroka. \u201cAnd Hough, who was wrestling up a weight, gutted out a good win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kent-Meridian hasn\u2019t beaten Kentwood during Owens\u2019 seven-year tenure. However, Wednesday night\u2019s meet proved to be the closest battle the two rival schools have enjoyed in many, many years.<\/p>\n
The tight-fisted finish also illustrated how far Kent-Meridian has come this season. Kent-Meridian entered the season with a 6-54 record against North Division foes dating back to 2001. During that span, K-M has not won more than two dual meets in a single season. This season, however, the Royals now have a 5-4 overall dual meet record and last week\u2019s tournament title to go along with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a group of kids who make a difference,\u201d Owens said \u201cThis year is probably the best leadership I\u2019ve had since being here. We have four seniors who are leaders and who want to wrestle. They show up, work hard and lead by example.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those four seniors \u2013 Valdez, Andrew Smith, Nick Lemmon (160) and Thomas Reinhart (189) \u2013 came away with four of K-M\u2019s five wins on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The difference in the Royals is noticeable, Sroka said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a very much improved team,\u201d Sroka said. \u201cIt was anybody\u2019s ballgame. It\u2019s not like we came out and dominated. I thought they wrestled well, very well. It could have gone the other way very easily.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
STATE RANKINGS<\/p>\n
TEAM\t\t PTS.<\/p>\n
1. Lake Stevens \t109<\/p>\n
2 . Tahoma \t\t99<\/p>\n
3. University \t85<\/p>\n
4. Kentwood \t82<\/p>\n
5. Graham-Kapowsin \t79<\/p>\n
6. Mead \t\t72<\/p>\n
7. Auburn \t\t56<\/p>\n
8. Heritage \t\t52<\/p>\n
9. Emerald Ridge \t49<\/p>\n
10. Moses Lake \t 43<\/p>\n
* Rankings provided by www.washingtonwrestlingreport.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Business as usual.
\nThat was the rallying cry for the Kentwood High wrestling team Wednesday night, which felt the heat from surging Kent-Meridian, but was able to cool off the Royals 40-25 in a South Puget Sound League North Division dual meet.
\nKent-Meridian was coming off a team title from the Liberty Invitational on Saturday. On Wednesday night, however, the Royals couldn\u2019t solve Kentwood, which received pins from Ruben Navejas (112), Teddy Zografos (130), Matt Gordon (145) and Nathan Herrick (275) en route to the victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":1184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}