Bulldogs fall to state champ Mishawaka 45-19 at IHSAA State Wrestling Meet Quarterfinals

A USA-365.com Special Report by Mark Smith

03-03-2010

15th Annual Team Wrestling State Finals
2-27-2010 at Center Grove

Quarterfinal
Castle 54, (West Lafayette) Harrison 14
Yorktown 31, (Indianapolis) Roncalli 24
(Indianapolis) Perry Meridian 39, (Indianapolis) Cathedral 20
Mishawaka 45, CROWN POINT 19
Semifinals
Yorktown 30, Castle 27
Mishawaka 41, (Indianapolis) Perry Meridian 15
Championship
Mishawaka 37, Yorktown 17 (title)

Mishawaka 45, CROWN POINT 19
2-27-10 at Center Grove High School at Greenwood, Indiana

(0-4) 215 pounds (Mishawaka) Christian Lentz (44-2) 11-0 over (CP John Hannon (22-16)
(0-8) HEAVYWEIGHT (Mishawaka) Travis Thomas (41-3) 17-3 over (CP) Josh Swope (17-13)
(0-11) 103 pounds: (Mishawaka) Grant Martsolf (30-12) 2-1 over (CP) Colton Saroff (26-12)
(0-17) 112 pounds: (Mishawaka) Paul Beck (48-2) pinned Jordan Kelly (0-1) 3:49
(0-21)119 pounds (Mishawaka) Layton Binion (35-9) 13-3 over (CP) Matt Harvey (15-12)
(0-27) 125 pounds (Mishawaka) Taylor Wisler (39-4) pinned (CROWN POINT) Dustin Schurg (25-10) 1:11.

(3-27) 130 pounds (CROWN POINT) Jason Tsirtsis (43-0) 8-2 over (Mishawaka) Nick Shrader (40-3)
(3-30) 135 pounds (Mishawaka) Matt Guerra (43-5) 8-5 over (CROWN POINT) Dallas Schurg (30-8)
(7-30) 140 pounds (CROWN POINT) Josh Flamme (32-5) 12-0 over (Mishawaka) Tyler Smith (2-1)
(13-30) 145 pounds (CROWN POINT) Eric Roach (42-0) pinned (Mishawaka) Brian Weldon (4-3) 1:17
(13-33) 152 pounds (Mishawaka) Ryan Stahl (46-5) 7-4 over (CP) Tommy Renn (32-6)
(13-39) 160 pounds (Mishawaka) Sidney Logan (4-1) pinned (CP) Eugene Black (0-1) 1:37
(13-45) 171 pounds (Mishawaka) Richard Morin (37-7) pinned (CP) Matt Langbehn (11-15) 4:19
(19-45) 189 pounds (CROWN POINT) Tyler Kral (33-3) pinned (Mishawaka) Trey Taylor (0-1)

GREENWOOD (2-27-2010)  One of the attractive things about wrestling is that results don't change that much from day to day or from week to week.
If a team beats you one month, all things being equal, they beat you the next month, too.

That turned out to be the case for Crown Point in their return match with top-ranked Mishawaka Saturday at the 2010 Indiana state team wrestling championships.
When Mishawaka met CP in December, they won 42-17.  When Mishawaka faced CP against Saturday, they won 45-19.  The top-ranked and undefeated Cavemen (31-0) went on to regain the state championship they won in 2008 and lost to CP in 2009.

CP coach Scott Vlink suffered through the early portion of the 90-minute match when Mishawaka took an insurmountable 27-0 lead.  Facing a dominant team with 10 seniors and 10 state qualifiers, the Bulldogs truthfully had little mathematical chance without Hawkins (38-4), who'd won against Mishawaka in December.  All things weren't equal. CP (18-2) was without 119-pound state finalist Anthony Hawkins and 160-pounder Dillon Cope.  You don't figure to defeat a top team when you're shorthanded and CP didn't come close.

"That's a great team," Vlink said of Mishawaka. "What can you say?  They're clearly the best team here.  I'd be amazed if anyone else here scores 19 points on them.  That's a real good team and we were young.  We don't have anything to be ashamed of.  Some things didn't go well this week but we put out there who we could put out there."

The pivotal quarterfinal match began at 215 pounds and the Cavemen jumped ahead 8-0 as expected with wins by Cavemen seniors Christian Lentz (44-2) and Travis Thomas (41-3), two state qualifiers.  The Bulldogs did well not to give up 12 points (two pins) there, trailing just 8-0.  But Grant Martsolf edged out CP's Colton Saroff 2-1 at 103 and Mishawaka then led 17-0 when state runner up Paul Beck (48-2) pinned CP freshman sub Jordan Kelly at 112.

Kelly was wrestling at 112 so junior Matt Harvey could bump up to 119, replaced Hawkins and toke on Mishawaka soph Layton Binion.  But Binion won and Mishawaka's Taylor Wisler pinned CP freshman Dustin Schurg at 125 and the Cavemen had built the 27-0 lead with eight matches remaining.

CP needed five consecutive wins at that point to mathematically stay in the match and they just couldn't get them.  Stahl's win over Tommy Renn put Mishaswaka over the top and the Cavemen used a couple of JV wrestlers after that.  There was never a time when you thought Crown Point would win and, with four quarterfinal matches occurring simultaneously in the crowded Center Grove gym, the CP-Mishawaka end of the building became somewhat quiet.

"We had two starters out," said Jason Tsirtsis, who finished his sophomore season at 43-0.  "We were down from the start.  I thought we had some good individual performances.  Some guys were sluggish in their first matches.  The points didn't add up."

Had Hawkins (37-4) and Cope (22-11) been available and had won for CP, there was an outside chance the Bulldogs could have pulled off the upset.  Renn trailed only 5-3 late before losing to Stahl, the 152-pound state fourth place finsiher.  CP's Colton Saroff lost just 2-1 to Grant Martsolf at 103 pounds.  If you turn those two matches, and if Hawkins and Cope are available and win, that would have been a 27 point swing on a day when the margin of victory was 26.

But that's also a lot of 'ifs' against a team that had not had more than 24 points scored on them all season.  If CP had met Mishawaka at the state finals last year, the Bulldogs might not have that 2009 title.  You don't want to get into 'ifs'.

"They had 10 seniors," said CP assistant coach Jake Rodriguez of Mishawaka.  "So they should be good.  They should win here.  The toughest thing to do is to keep everybody together and mentally focused all season."

Crown Point has jacked up the expectations for the wrestling program.  The Bulldogs were sincerely disappointed by losing in the quarterfinals to the undefeated top-ranked team.  They have to know that's a little crazy.

"I know," said Rodriguez.  "But there's nothing wrong with that.  Something good is going on when the expectations are as high as they are."

The better question was can Mishawaka, which is 3-0 against CP the last two years, rebuild in time to stop CP in 2011?  The Bulldogs gradaute Hawkins, Renn, John Hannon (22-16) and Dallas Schurg (30-8) out of the starting lineup but they may regain Cameron Halsted, who missed all season with a shoulder injury after starting at 103 on the state title team in 2009.
With two undefeated state champs coming back and any improvement at all in the upper weights, 2011 should be a Bulldog year.  Vlink agrees, but he has a warning about that.

"I'm sure Merrillville thought that this year," said the Bulldog coach.  "I don't think many people thought we'd beat them at the conference and the regional.  I think we exceeded everyone's expectations but our own."

"But that's a good lesson for us.  We've got a whole lot of people coming back and we should be the favorite.  But that guarantees nothing.  There's a lot of things you can't control. Like what happened to us this week.  We'll take some time off but then we'll work hard and get ready for next year like we always do."

"It's disheartening to get beat like that," Tsirtsis agreed.  "It was an ugly score.  But you've got to hold your head up.  We made it to team state.  That's a big accomplishment."

STATE FINALS NOTES:  CP senior Anthony Hawkins was unavailable after being diagnosed with 'shingles', a viral infection of nerve roots related to chickenpox.  Hawkins was ill earlier in the season and shingles sometimes breaks out when the immune system is weakened.

Coach Scott Vlink said, "I think that's been bothering him for some time.  Shingles for an 18-year-old kid.  That's not right."

"I'm starting to feel much better now," said Hawkins, who watched in street clothes Saturday.  "I had trouble breathing.  I felt all cramped inside.  My lymph nodes were all swollen.  It was a lot worse three days ago.  I wasn't in school.  It looked bad, too."

Crown Point is 39-3 over the last two seasons with all three losses coming against Mishawaka, which is 59-1 over the past two seasons.  Crown Point coach Scott Vlink says that CP has had six undefeated wrestlers in the history of the school.

"Marcus Shrewsbury and Anthony Hawkins last season," he said Saturday.  "Jason Tsirtsis and Eric Roach this year.  Swinehart and Maile back in the 70s."

Crown Point's Jonothan Maile was 21-0 in at 155 pounds in 1975, while Kent Swinehart was 18-0 at 138 pounds in 1974.  Vlink understood that CP's quick exit Saturday was probably the luck of the draw.

"If any of these other teams had drawn Mishawaka, they'd be going home and we'd still be wrestling.  That's just the way it goes."

Tsirtsis and Roach completed undefeated seasons the week after winning individual state titles.  There was a feeling that high school wrestling came easier to Tsirtsis in his sophomore year than it did when he was a freshman, largely because everything about being a high school freshman is difficult.

"It felt good," he said.  "I wasn't that happy with my performance (in the finals).  I believed in myself.  You have to.  I just came in with the same mindset I had all year.  I didn't wrestle that well on my feet.  I did in overtime."

"I wrestled the same kid Friday that I'd wrestled last year.  Other than that, the last three kids, I'd never seen them before."