Plains brings home three medals in wrestling meet
Matt Unrau
After traveling to Eureka over the weekend for the Buzz Lucey Invitational the Plains wrestling team came back to Plains with three medal winners and a whole lot more experience against higher Class competition.
The two Beech brothers Kenneth and Kris both placed second at the meet and Cole Goodwin got fourth for Plains.
Kenneth once again fell to one of the state’s top wrestlers hailing from Frenchtown in the championship match.
The night before Kenneth wrestled against Tyler Stedman eventually losing to him by only a few points leaving Plains looking forward to the invitational on Saturday. However Coach Kenny Marjerrison says Kenneth got tripped up against Stedman with only a few seconds left in the first round allowing him to pin him just before the round ended.
Stedman is the number one ranked wrestler in 119. He won the state championship in Class A last season.
The other Beech, Kris, also had a big weekend.
“Kris had an absolutely stellar weekend. For a wrestler at 135 lb. and to take second that’s really good. He’s going to be fun to watch for the rest of the season,” says Marjerrison.
However it was Goodwin who came away with the match of the meet for Plains. Goodwin needed three matches to medal at the tournament and on his third match he was down 3 points to 6 with 12 seconds against a Whitefish opponent.
It was then that Goodwin willed himself to victory, reversing his opponent for two points and then threw him on his back for another three points and nearly pinned him to come away with a 8-6 victory.
“It was an awesome finish to a pretty tough match,” says Marjerrison. “Anytime a kid comes back with a few seconds left they are wrestling purely on hearts and guts.”
Another Plains wrestler, Rio Crismore, also nearly placed finishing one match win short of coming home with a medal. She won one match in the meet and led two other matches before losing them.
“All of our kids wrestled well for an all around weekend. We had a lot of good breakthroughs. We’re starting to knock the rust off,” says Marjerrison who thinks the little bit of success a lot of the wrestlers saw this weekend will motivate them to work even harder in practice.
Plains now will take two weeks off until they travel to St. Ignatius on Jan. 2 for the Mission Mountain Classic.
Questions or comments on this story can be directed to Matt Unrau by calling him at 826-3432 or by emailing him at editor@VP-MI.com.