TRC Wrestling: Three Champs Carry Peru To Team Title
DENVER – Peru rode titles from three of its wrestlers and a solid showing all around to claim the team title at Saturday’s Three Rivers Conference wrestling championships at North Miami.
Trey Sturgill at 106, Carter Kintner at 138 and Jordan Rader at 170 – all top seeds heading into the tournament – made the season work stand up with championships for the Tigers. Sturgill defeated North Miami’s Ethan Butcher 11-3 in the day’s first championship. Kintner recorded three falls en route to his title, the last a 3:23 job to beat Rochester’s Hadyn Prater. Rader had to falls to get to the final against Manchester’s Quentin Moore, then manhandled the Squire 13-1 in the final.
Peru scored 247 team points to best Manchester’s 214.5 and Maconaquah’s 199.5 as the top three finishers. Tippecanoe Valley tied for seventh with Wabash at 123 and Whitko had 52 points to finish tenth.
For the Vikings, Devin Bandow had the team’s top finish, serving as the only one to make a championship. In the 120-pound bracket, Bandow was the top seed and needed just a 7-1 decision over Peru’s Ethan Robinette to get to the final. In the championship against Southwood’s Robert Barnett, the Knight was able to hold on for a 14-10 decision.
At 132, Valley’s Jordan Owens went 2-2 in actual mat work, but was 3-2 with a forfeit. Owens had a fall at 4:21 against Noah Wootten of Rochester and a 6-5 decision over Reece Adamiec of Manchester before losing in the third-place match by pinfall at 46 seconds to Peru’s Torion Ja Forrest.
At 145, Valley’s Chevy Teeter claimed a forfeit and a fall at 1:50 over Southwood’s Carson Kelly in the winner’s bracket. But a 15-7 major decision loss to Manchester’s Collin Meggison put Teeter shooting for third, which a fall at 34 seconds over Northfield’s Kade Kennedy turned into a 4:02 fall by Peru’s Jonah Gray over Teeter in the third-place match.
Whitko had two wrestlers finish second. Kaleb Busz used two falls to reach the final, beating Wabash’s Aidan Benysh in 14 seconds and Peru’s Levi Cunningham in 1:29. North Miami’s Kasey Deardorff would pin Busz in the championship at 1:27. Isaac Walters at 182 used a pin of Manchester’s Denver Hall at 1:54 and a 6-3 decision over Braxton Dewey of Maconaquah to get to the championship match. Wabash’s Noah Cressell, the top seed in the division, proved it with a pin of Walters at 2:43.
Tippecanoe Valley will compete next Saturday in the Plymouth Wrestling Sectional while Whitko will head to Fort Wayne Carroll Wrestling Sectional.