Sports
Greyhounds and Blue Devils Compete at State Wrestling Championships
Maplewood Richmond Heights ended Thursday tied for eighth place in Class 1 competition, while Clayton wrapped up the day tied for 37th in Class 2.
COLUMBIA — Wrestling fans from across the state speckled the typically gold-filled seats of Mizzou Arena all day Thursday for the 81st Missouri State Wrestling Championships.
It took eight simultaneous matches at a time, but all four different classes completed their first round matches and also their consolation rounds, also known as wrestlebacks.
“There are a lot of logistics that go into it,” said Jason West, communications director for the Missouri State High School Activities Association. “We have over 1,600 matches over the next three days. There are four classes. There’s a lot of planning.”
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Midway through the first day of competition, West said he thought everything was running smoothly.
“The good thing is that this particular championship is at the point where it’s sort of a well-oiled machine now,” West said. “It’s more of planning logistics to just make sure the dominos fall the way they’re supposed to.”
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It also requires a large number of workers to come in and make sure the various operations run efficiently.
“There are approximately 65 to 70 different workers and volunteers,” West said. “We’ve got mat officials, table officials, people entering computer stats and other things like that. There’s a lot of volunteer work, as well.”
After a long day of grappling, here’s how participating Clayton-Richmond Heights Patch high schools fared Thursday:
Class 1
Maplewood Richmond Heights
- Tied for eighth place with eight poin
- lost his opening 125-pound bout to Brookfield’s Jimmy Thomas by technical fail. Later in the day, he defeated St. Mary’s Brian Erstad, 8-3, in the wrestleback round.
- At 160 pounds, pinned Jimmy Grant of Sherwood High School with 3:59 remaining in his first-round bout.
- was pinned by Polo Fall’s Justin Hicks in the opening round at 189 pounds. In his wrestleback, Clark pinned Dakota Wooten from Tarkio High School.
Class 2
Clayton
- Tied for 37th place with three points
- Both Caleb Grady and Edward Davis lost their opening bouts, but Grady did go on to win his wrestleback.