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February 2015
Page 11
high school sports
Arlington Wrestling Heads into Strong Post-Season
By Ivan Pagan & Jason Phillips , Special to THE VIEW 38002
The Arlington Tigers have
advanced to the semi-final round
of the TSSAA Region VIII
wrestling team tournament.
They did so in beating East High
School by a score of 58-18 last
night [on January 22nd] at
Arlington High School. The
Tigers come into the tournament
as District 15 champions having
gone undefeated in regular
season competition against
Bartlett, Brighton, Bolton,
Cordova, Kingsbury, Millington,
and Munford high schools.
The Region tournament
includes the top four teams in
District 15 and the top four in
District 16 which is comprised
of Collierville, Germantown,
Houston, East High School,
Ridgeway, and Southwind.
Arlington’s grapplers have
had their best season thus far
with a stellar 27-5 overall record
in dual meet competition. Only
one of those losses came at the
hands of a Tennessee team.
That being perennial powerhouse, Christian Brothers.
Coach Jonathan Simpson has
three returning individual region
champions in his lineup; Nathan
Enzor (Sr.), Andrew Zarshenas
(Sr.) and Bryce Dodson (So.).
They are supported by
emerging stars Rayveon Hardin
(Jr.) at 195 lbs. who won the
prestigious Father Ryan tournament in December [a first for
Arlington] and has amassed over
thirty wins this season; Michael
Mowery (Jr.) at 145 lbs. who
may be the front runner for the
individual crown in his weight
class this year locally; and
freshman standout, Caleb Morgan (106 lbs.), who also has
officially won over thirty
matches so far this season.
Will Craft (138 lbs.) is another senior who is having a
breakout year. After placing 3rd
in last year’s individual Region
VIII tournament he is poised to
win the championship this year
and possibly place at the state
tournament one month away.
With this strong core group
powering the squad, the Tigers
find themselves the solid favorites to win both the Region VIII
team and individual tournaments
this year.
Coach Simpson felt good
about the team going into the
Arlington High School at the Mark E. Collins Theatre
Presents
February 27, 28, March 2, 3 at 7pm - March 1 at 2pm
Tickets $14 Children - $16 Adults
Photos Courtesy of LES
Produced by special arrangement with Musical Theatre International (MTI)
dual with East High despite
having gone through some
hiccups in recent outings. The
team squeaked out a 41 to 37
win against rival Bartlett on
January the 14th, senior night.
Arlington was trailing by two
team points going into the last
match of the evening. On this
night it was Caleb Morgan who
came through for the Tigers by
pinning his opponent, Korbin
Sanderson late in the first period
of their match to seal the team
win.
Three days later they dropped
their first dual of the season to
Christian Brothers.
“I don’t feel we wrestled up
to our best performance on that
day, but Christian Brothers did a
really good job. They won all
the close matches which can
really hurt the score of a dual. It
can make it really seem lopsided, but I felt like we were
competitive. They were the
better team on that day, and
overall they probably still are the
better team. They got a good
tradition over there and we are
trying to work on that here.
That means you’ve got to step
out and be ready to wrestle
every time. And they [Tigers]
did a good job of turning it
around against Cordova and
Bolton on Tuesday [January
20th]night.” The Tigers won
those two subsequent outings by
scores of 50-21 and 57-21 respectively.
DISTRICT CHAMPS
The Arlington HS Freshman won the District Champions title with a 53-46 victory over Houston on February
6. The Freshman Tigers ended the season with a perfect
21-0 record.
The title game was hard fought with the Tigers coming from behind to win in Overtime. Congratulations to
Brogan Brewer for being named to the All Tournament
Team and John Anderson , who was named Tournament
MVP.
Simpson clearly feels the
team is peaking at the right time.
Moreover he wants them to keep
their collective foot on the pedal.
Leading into this first round of
this tournament he emphasized it
to his team. “We need to kind
of set the tone. You know, you
can come out here and you can
back down and you can goof off,
but that’s not going to look
really good as we move forward.
We need to set the tone early in
these matches and go out there
and wrestle our style; not hanging around waiting on things to
happen. We need to go out there
and force the action and get to
our positions and wrestle accordingly. Moving forward, I
think, we will use the momentum from tonight – from the
victory – to kind of push us in
the next round and hopefully
push us into the finals and get a
win there too.”