Schedule a nice change of pace for wrestling teams

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By Kermit Rowe, Staff Writer 10:36 PM Wednesday, December 7, 2011

In case you hadn’t noticed, the wrestling season opened this past weekend — but not the way it traditionally has in the past.

Usual season-opening tournaments like the Ironman Invitational and the Northeastern Duals are now second-weekend events. They’ll get going Friday, with Graham heading north for the grueling Ironman and Springfield, Northwestern, Southeastern, Triad, Urbana, West Liberty-Salem and the host Jets at the Northeastern Duals.

Falcons coach Jeff Jordan welcomed the change of pace.

“I wanted to get some of the cobwebs out of the way,” said Jordan, whose team hosted and beat Huntington, W. Va., 50-13 on Saturday. “We train so hard that we get banged up up there. I’m glad we can get a 6-minute match in in front of the home crowd.”

Several area teams chose to open last weekend, but others, like Northeastern, chose to wait one weekend. For the Jets, that kept their tournament as their debut.

Two will have full teams: Northwestern and Northeastern. This match will include a teacher (the Jets’ Ed Rhoades) vs. pupil (the Warriors’ Harry Husted) matchup. Rhoades was Husted’s coach at Springfield High School in the mid-1990s.

“I expect it to be close,” said Rhoades. “Harry and I have been talking all week about kids in different weight classes from different teams and where the battles will be, but we rarely mention our own teams battling.

“It’s like chess, which pawn can be moved where — to cause the most damage to another team. Harry and I are both working to win the tourney, but we both know there are some real tough teams this weekend.”

Joining the six area teams at the duals are Covington, Fairborn and Tippecanoe. The teams will wrestle in a round-robin dual format.

Good debuts: Several teams had good debuts this past weekend.

Springfield finished second in the eight-team Western Hills tourney, with four champions — Jonathan Roberts (145), Darryl Grayson (182), Devin Nye (220) and Aaron Cosby (285) — and two runners-up (Samuel Grayson and Jason Cameron).

Urbana went 2-3 to finish seventh at the Sielski Duals at Coldwater, with Donnie Scott (182) and Sam Harris (195) both going 5-0 on the weekend. The Hillclimbers beat Tinora (42-36) and Lincolnview (52-18), but lost to St. Marys Memorial (46-33), Coldwater (50-21) and Carey (60-9).

Greeneview was seventh at the Dick Hoover Invitational at Holland Springfield.

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