Chips face tough competition
Meyers takes 2nd to lead Manistee at MCC
By MATT WENZEL, Manistee News Advocate
Sports Editor
Published: Sunday, December 13, 2009
SCOTTVILLE — If the Manistee High School
wrestling team was looking for a challenge, it didn’t have to go very
far.
The Chippewas wrestled in the 12-team Scottville Optimist Invitational
individual tournament at Mason County Central on Saturday against what
coach Chris Codden said was some of the best competition his team will
face all season.
“We usually have to travel a long ways for great competition,” Codden
said. “We went 15 miles and probably had the best competition we’re
going to get all year from any tournament, other than maybe the Petoskey
tournament, which will be Division 2 and Division 1. It was a great
tournament.”
The tournament included Division 1 teams Lowell and West Ottawa.
“For freestyle, we have to drive three
hours to get a tournament like that,” Codden said. “It was just a
wonderful tournament and the competition, bar none, you couldn’t find
that anywhere else.”
Individually, Alex Meyers led the way for the Chippewas, finishing 4-1
on the day for second place at 103 pounds.
“He’s not a kid who waits to get into situations, he attacks,” Codden
said. “The only two losses he has on the season were from mistakes. I’m
not surprised Alex is doing this well.” Meyers lost to Shelby’s Brandon
Cox in the finals, moving his record to 10-2 on the season, according to
Codden.
“Alex is definitely a bright star for the rest of them to follow,”
Codden said. “He is totally committed to the program and puts in the
extra time and you can see that now. It pays off.”
Codden said he was also impressed with Nic Carter, who finished 1-2 at
140 pounds, with a win over Lakeview’s Pat Outman. “That was
unbelievable,” Codden said about Carter’s win. “They kind of wrote Nic
off in the seeding meeting. He wrestled the top two in his weight class.
I was real happy with Nic.”
Manistee’s Jon Bailey (112) went 2-2 on Saturday for fifth place, David
Engstrom (119) went 1-2 to finish fifth, Tucker Bruce (135), Trevor
Schwandt (171) and Alex Waterman (215) all finished fifth, while Haydon
Codden (125), Mason Wallace (130), Dakota Girard (145), Zach Nezki
(152), Brenna Ramirez (160), Tyler Knudsen (189) and Noah Blauwkamp
(heavyweight) all finished 0-2.
Codden said that his freshmen wrestlers at
lower weights are still making an adjustment to high school competition. |
Manistee’s Nic Carter pins
Lakeview’s Pat Outman during a 140-pound match at the Scottville
Optimist Invitational on Saturday at Mason County Central. (Matt
Wenzel/News Advocate)
Manistee’s Alex Meyers
wrestles West Ottawa’s Tanner Kuipers. Meyers placed second at 103
pounds. (Matt Wenzel/News Advocate)
“At this point right now, my lower
weights, which were all my kids from freestyle, are kind of in a lull,”
he said. “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on because we can’t get
any stability going. We started off really strong in Gladwin and
Standish, and then we’ve kind of hit a dry spell. We’re just trying to
get out of this lull.”
A number of the Chippewas were seeded low off the bat, which made for a
difficult afternoon.
“If you don’t have a good record or aren’t a state returner, you don’t
get any easy matches,” Codden said. “We weren’t really happy with a lot
of the stuff that was going on, as far as in the beginning, but as the
matches went on we were pretty happy. The coaches and I were very happy
with the way the kids performed on and off the mat.
“We did not get any penalty points. We didn’t get any cautions for
illegal moves or anything like that. We wrestled really well and we
wrestled with a lot of intensity. The sportsmanship was there on and off
the mat.” |