By Gaylen Duskey
realfang@citlink.net
No one at the Braxton County High School Gymnasium Saturday was sure whether
Calhoun set a record for margin of victory in the Little Kanawha Conference
wrestling tournament but all agreed it was a dominating win.
The Red Devils rolled up 208 points to be runner-up St. Marys by a whopping
70.5. Clay took third with 118 followed by Braxton 101.5; Williamstown 88.5;
Ritchie 64; Ravenswood 54; Wirt 46.5 and Roane 45. The win was the fourth
straight LKC title for the Red Devils.
Calhoun won five individual championships including Justin Ramsey (125),
Jaron Sampson (135) Andrew Cummings (135) Justin Price (152) and Paul
Goodrich (171). Cummings, who beat Ravenswood's Judd Dennis in the
championship match, was the tournament's Most Outstanding Wrestler.
The Red Devils placed nine wrestlers in the finals as 13 of the 14 Calhoun
wrestlers placed in the top four.
Calhoun was so dominant that it had the team title mathematically wrapped up
before the championship round, something that Red Devils coach Mike Stump
thought may have cost his team a little.
"I told them we had it won before the finals started," Stump said. "In a way
that may have been a mistake since they didn't wrestle offensively in the
championship round. They wrestled great defensively but not offensively."
Calhoun did have a lot of close matches in the finals including three they
lost.
The most frustrating, to Stump, may have been at 119 where Williamstown's
Craig Johnson pinned Calhoun's Bryan Gungle with less than a minute
remaining.
"Bryan had a 12-6 lead with: 35 to go," Stump said. "You don't lose a match
when you have a six-point lead with that amount of time remaining. He made a
mistake and it cost him."
The loss was even more frustrating since it appeared on at least two
occasions Gungle had Johnson pinned.
Gungle was one of four Red Devils to take second. Eddie Burrows, Dustyn
Nichols and Dustin Whipkey also placed second.
Zac Yeager had a third for the Red Devils while Seth Jarvis, Caleb Hart and
Michael Roberts were fourth.
Stump said Calhoun would try to find a match during the next two weeks to
keep sharp. If not the Red Devils will return to action in two weeks in the
Class AA/A Region IV Tournament at Roane County.
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