Championship Run Ends In Heartbreak
FORT WAYNE – Everything was set up perfect for Wawasee heading into the final cards of its championship defense. A sudden death loss, however, to Western in the championship at Saturday’s IHSWCA Team State wrestling tournament may show more of what Wawasee is truly made of going forward.
“I’m not going to lie, this one is going to hurt, it’ll hurt really bad,” started Wawasee head coach Frank Bumgardner after his team fell to Western, 34-29, in the Class 2-A championship match. A showdown at 145 that had been brewing for nearly 12 hours of wrestling (and sitting around watching 34 other teams wrestle) wouldn’t be settled after six minutes with the floor score tied at 8-8 and the team score knotted at 31.
Wawasee senior Garrett Stuckman and Western’s Dylan Goudy waged a good battle over the first three periods, with Stuckman getting the early advantage, only for Goudy to nearly end it with a takedown into a near fall in the second period. Stuckman would score late points to tie the match, and had the match been two seconds longer, Stuckman might have gotten a late two for a takedown, but the buzzer sounded before the officials could determine position.
Into overtime, Goudy fended off Stuckman’s advance and moved into a locked position on Stuckman’s hip. As Stuckman tried to wrangle over Goudy’s leg to score the two, Goudy escaped the grip and got the two and the title for Western.
“We had a lot of guys wrestle well, and that’s a bright spot for us in all of this,” Bumgardner said. “We’ll have to recover (Sunday) and come back Monday and get back to work.”
Wawasee trailed 31-22 with three matches to go against the Panthers, but had all ranked competitors on deck to nearly complete the comeback.
Geremia Brooks couldn’t get the pin, but took a 13-9 decision on Hunter Cottingham and Braxton Alexander scored a fall at 1:42 on Jackson Hartsough setting up the final between Stuckman and Goudy tied at 31 for all the marbles. Following the match, Wawasee was assessed two penalty points for misconduct, which showed the discrepancy in the final score.
Among the highlights in the Western dual were falls from Damien Rodriguez and Alex Castro, both in under a minute.
Wawasee, which won the Team State last year with a come-from-behind victory over Garrett in the championship, reached the final in 2019 with impressive wins over Rochester, Edgewood and North Montgomery.
Wawasee opened with a convincing 65-14 romp over Rochester, then fended off a gritty Edgewood side 38-29 to win the pool. After over two hours off to allow pool play to settle in the Class 3-A tourney, Wawasee came back out and waxed North Montgomery 49-20 in an impressive showing leading up to the championship. Western was also just as impressive, blowing out South Dearborn and Leo before completely dismantling Jimtown 43-24 in its semi-final matchup that wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicates.
Bumgardner spoke about the lead-up to the final, which harbored several highlights for his program.
“We were just about ‘do your job, and do it as well as you can’, end of story there,” Bumgardner said. “We tried to really focus on not watching the other matches, just worry about us and preparing for the next one. North Montgomery is a really good team, and that’s twice in two years we’ve seen them in a semi-final. We did not expect that dual to be like that, especially score-wise, we expected it to come down to the end. But really it came up to toss-up matches, and all of those seemed to go in our favor. Yeah, the score got out of hand, but that was our kids working hard and doing their jobs.”
On the day for the Warriors, Rodriguez was a machine, scoring all four wins via fall, one of four Wawasee wrestlers to go unbeaten at 4-0 along with Brooks, Alexander and Dylan Tom at 106. Jace Alexander, Haegan Slusher and Stuckman were all 3-1, Slusher scoring his three wins via pin fall.
Wawasee returns to the mat Thursday at Elkhart Memorial to wrap up Northern Lakes Conference duals.