2012-13 Calaveras Wrestling Season Summary
Our tee shirt saying for this year was “W43”. That stood for “Work For Three” which meant work hard to win a third section title in the past three years. When the season was over, one of the senior wrestlers told the coaches that it should have been W44. Because that’s exactly what we did. We won two section titles, both the dual meet title and the individual title to add to the individual section titles we won in 2012 and 2011. That puts our total at 15 Section Championships. In addition, we won a 7th consecutive varsity league championship this year.
The season started out with a trouncing of Lodi High School in our first match. We beat them 53-18. Then we placed 9 wrestlers at the Oakdale Tourney, with Justin Brown winning it and being named the outstanding wrestler and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. But then came Tokay. Tokay had not beaten us in 7 years, so we might have been a bit complacent. They gave us a humbling, beating us 37-22. We came back strong on the weekend though, with a solid performance at the Casa Robles Tournament, finishing 5th of 26 teams and placing 7. As the holidays hit, Justin Brown was our lone placer at the always tough Sierra Nevada Classic, taking 3rd.
As the league season began, we found the Mother Lode League was really down from a year ago. In our first four league matches, we held Summerville, Amador, ROP and Argonaut to single digit points, beating them by a combined score of 280-27. The Tim Brown Tourney yielded two medals, with Noah Shelgren finishing 7th and Justin Brown finishing 2nd. As the end of January came near, we made short order of Linden, beating them 61-15. Then it was time for the big showdown with Bret Harte. There had been a lot of talk about the match throughout the season. BH had some very solid and accomplished wrestlers. We would have to be on our game. Their good guys were pinners. If things went wrong with the bonus points, we could be in trouble. All week long at practice before the dual, our war cry was “Pin and don’t get pinned!” We focused on getting after the bonus points and not giving any up. It paid off in a big way. The final score was 43-20. While we won 8 matches and they won 6, the big difference was in the bonus points. We had 5 pins, they had none. We scored a total of 20 bonus points; they scored only 2.
We entered the Division 5 Dual Section Tournament as the number two seed behind defending champion Escalon. After a first round bye, we drew Hughson High School in round 2. On the other side of the bracket, Escalon and Bret Harte would battle it out to get to the finals. We defeated Hughson 43-22, and Escalon won 51-30. We met Escalon in the finals in what would prove to be a wild see-saw battle. We scored first with a pin by 120-pounder Collin Kulp. Escalon responded with a regular decision. We replied with another pin. They responded with three wins, two by pin. We came back with a major decision, and then gave up a forfeit. With 6 matches to go, 182-pounder Nolan Kannel scored a regular decision. With 5 matches to go, Escalon was ahead 24-19. We lost two close regular decisions that made the score 30-19 with only three matches to go. A victory was nearly out of reach. Then things got interesting. Wrestling up a weight class, Noah Shelgren pinned his heavyweight opponent to bring the score to 30-25. There was still hope. 106-pounder Tyler Chavez was next. It turned out to be the match of the day. It was a real back and forth match with both wrestlers finding themselves on their backs fighting not to get pinned. When it was all said and done, Chavez won by a score of 14-13. We were down 30-28 with one match to go. At 113’s, Tylor Gonsalves went out and quickly pinned his Escalon foe. We won the match 34-30 and brought home the section banner.
The league tournament was held at Summerville High School on February 9th. While we considered ourselves the favorites, the local papers had talked about how Bret Harte would fare much better at the league tournament, since they were a much better tournament team. One Bret Harte coach was quoted to say,” We WILL win the MLL tournament, no doubt about it.” Well, that was not to be. We scored a total of 217. Bret Harte was 2nd with 137. We had 6 champions, and qualified all 14 wrestlers to the Division 5 Section Tournament (Small School Section). One unexpected highlight was sophomore heavyweight Jarred Kirk. Kirk, our J.V. 220 pounder, was asked to step in and wrestle at the varsity heavyweight spot since we wanted to fill all weights and pick up valuable team points. Kirk surprised everyone, pinning his way through the tournament and becoming a league champion.
The Division 5 Section Tournament took place on February 15th and 16th at Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst. We knew it would be a shootout for the section title with Escalon, and possibly Hughson. The team points were close as we reached the finals. We placed 6 in the finals as did Escalon. We ended up with three champions, and Escalon had two. What really made the difference, however, were the consolation matches. All 14 of our wrestlers scored team points. We placed 11 wrestlers in the top 6, qualifying 10 of them to the masters (a new record). By the night’s end, we won the individual section championship with 234.5 points and Escalon finishing 2nd with 212. Another amazing highlight once again was heavyweight sophomore Jarred Kirk. After an unexpected finish the previous week at the league tourmney, everyone figured Jarred would maybe win a match or two at the tournament, contribute some points, and be happy to get some experience at the section level. Instead, Jarred went out and won the tournament!
We took a record ten wrestlers to the Masters Tournament at the Stockton Arena on February 22nd and 23rd. 160 pounder Justin Brown finished 3rd and 220 pounder Noah Shelgren finished 6th. Both wrestlers qualified for the State Tournament in Bakersfield the following week. It would be the third trip for Brown and the first trip for Shelgren. At the state tournament, Shelgren had a solid showing, going 2-2, losing to two eventual medalists. Brown placed 7th, after losing to a three time state champion from LeMoore in round three. In the consolations, he had a tough loss in a match in which he was ahead. He finished 6-2 on the weekend. As a California State placer, Justin qualified for the Senior Nationals Tournament in Virginia Beach, Va. He won his first two matches in commanding fashion, pinning his first opponent and teching his second. He lost a close 4-2 match to a two time runner up from Minnesota who went on to achieve All American status by placing 4th. In the consolations bracket, he lost to a Texas state champion 4-3 who also became an All American.
Overall it was an outstanding and frankly, very surprising season. We accomplished far more than we thought we would when the season began. Winning a league title and two section titles in the same season is special. We haven’t done that very often. A big thank you goes out to our sponsors, fans, parents, coaches for the dedication and support that they have shown throughout the year.