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Manistee wins second straight team district
by Dylan Savela
Manistee News Advocate Sports writer
Published Friday, Feb. 11, 2011
LUDINGTON — Manistee’s Adam Ball couldn’t
stop his nose from bleeding. Nor could the Chippewa coaches.
In the last match of the Division 3 team district meet Thursday in
Ludington, Ball’s 171-pound bout was twice stopped for the minor injury.
The remedy? A mummy-like patch job of masking tape wound thrice around
his head. Anything to get him back on the mat to finish the meet would
have sufficed, because at that point Manistee had its second straight
district title all but wrapped up already. After awaiting the winner of
Mason County Central (48) and host Ludington (33), the Chippewas topped
MCC, 46-33, to retain its crown and earn its spot at the team regional
tournament to be held on Wednesday in Chippewa Hills.
Last season, after winning a Division 2
district title at home, Manistee coach Chris Codden was hard-pressed to
put a finger on when the feat was last attained by the program. After
Thursday’s victory, he was quick to give the answer.
“Now I know,” Codden said with a laugh. “Just last year.”
The second straight title came a bit simpler for the Chippewas as they
benefited from four open-weight class victories over the Spartans,
awarded to Manistee’s Daylan Hill (112), Alex Meyers (119), Nic Carter
(140) and Larryn Kukla (145).
“I was really surprised with all the moving around,” Codden said of the
numerous voids. “There was so many wrestlers being shifted around and
that made me a bit nervous. The open points were huge, but the kids that
went out there couldn’t get stuck and that’s what made the whole night.”
After Manistee dropped its first match by pin, the Chippewas’ Alex
Waterman (215) returned the favor to MCC’s Jon Dipple in the second
period to knot the score.
Onekama co-ops with Manistee in the sport
of Wrestling
All
Sports at Onekama 2010-2011
Onekama High School
2010-2011
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Chippewa heavyweight Raul Torres then edged
Doug Wyman by points as the team followed suit with victories by David
Enstrom (130) and Haydon Codden (135) each via first-round pin over the
Spartans’ Brad Renwick and Cody Jensen, respectively. And at the time
Carter’s hand was raised via a Spartan void in the 10th of 14 matches,
the title was mathematically Manistee’s.
Manistee’s Raul Torres
wrestles Mason County Central’s Doug Wyman during a heavyweight
match in a Division 3 team district final on Thursday in Ludington.
(Dylan Savela/News Advocate)
Manistee senior Nic Carter
(right) exchanges congratulations to Onekama senior Raul Torres
after Torres picked up a win for the co-op Chippewas..
“It’s just about getting on a roll and
building off each other’s wins,” Carter, a senior, said after receiving
his second team district medal. “We seem to do that pretty well as a
team. Everybody gets into it, everybody feeds off of it.”
While MCC’s Ian Morton, Trever Skinner, Aaron Barnhardt, Jason Steiger,
Nick Allen and Justin Steiger all earned wins, it just wasn’t enough to
match Manistee’s full lineup. “We were a full team tonight,” Codden
said. “Other than that, it was just a lot of hard work. These kids come
together as a team like no team I’ve ever had. You can’t ask for a
better school system than MAPS to show this kind of pride.
“This is a very big stride for the program,” he said of consecutive
district titles. “The celebration starts and ends tonight though, then
we’re back to work (today) to get ready for Saturday’s individual
(district) and next week’s regional.
“Now it’s about carrying this momentum.”
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