Wrestling notes: Valley Center off to strong start

Longtime Valley Center wrestling coach Brian Shelton has ridden off into the sunset, but the Hornets’ wrestlers haven’t missed a beat.

Valley Center, fifth at the Class 5A tournament last season, has started with a bang this year, capturing the 16-team Colby tournament last weekend over a field that included Garden City, top-ranked in Class 6A, and No. 6 Dodge City.

First-year coach Tate Lowe – a former Dodge City assistant – came to Valley Center last year as the heir apparent to Shelton before taking the reins this year.

“Our kids rose to the occasion,” Lowe said of the Colby results. “We had four kids go undefeated. They rose to the level of their competition and rose above it really well.”

Among those going 6-0 in the tournament was freshman Devin Gomez at 126 pounds, ranked third in Class 5A.

“We bumped him up (to 132) to wrestle Lane Glover of Goddard (ranked No. 2 in 5A), whom he pinned on a technical fall,” Lowe said.

Also going 6-0 was senior Sam Weldon, who stands 11-0 overall and is ranked No. 3 at 195.

“He’s only gone three periods once,” Lowe said. “He was losing to Dylan Servis of Dodge City, an All-American at 182 who was wrestling up at 195. Sam kept grinding it out to win by one point.”

Weldon, an outside linebacker on the Hornets’ football team that got to the 5A quarterfinals, took a 9-8 decision.

“He has had 10 pins – all in the first period,” Lowe said. “He’s a team captain, and I’m excited to see how he builds over Christmas break. I want to see where he’s going to take these guys the next half of the year.”

Lowe said the 9-2 football season had a positive effect as they transitioned to wrestling.

“It’s a straight carryover,” he said. “These kids enjoy winning. They won in football season, and it carried over.”

Also posting 6-0 marks at Colby were juniors Dallas Boone at 138 and Tyler Boone at 160.

“We’re well-balanced,” Lowe said. “They just wrestled solidly all weekend long and got the job done.”

Valley Center closes 2016 at this weekend’s tournament at Ottawa, and the 2017 portion of the season will be much more challenging, Lowe said, with tournaments at Derby, Newton and Garden City.

“We have a tough second half,” he said. “We’re definitely not trying to shy away from tough competition. We’ll wrestle our best and see what we can do.”

All-girls tournament – The sport of girls wrestling keeps building, and recently McPherson held an all-girls tournament that attracted 26 competitors from 13 schools.

Area schools in the field, in addition to the Bullpups, were Douglass, Newton, Hutchinson, Eisenhower, Buhler, Clearwater and Canton-Galva, McPherson girls coach Doug Kretzer said.

“Girls wrestling is really strong, with more than 14,000 girls involved nationwide,” said Kretzer, who is the girls wrestling representative on the Kansas Wrestling Coaches Association board.

McPherson will serve as host school for the Kansas girls state tournament on Feb. 11, and he said a proposal has been drawn up for girls wrestling to become a KSHSAA-sanctioned sport.

“There’s definitely a budding interest there,” he said.

He said members of the U.S. Women’s Olympic wrestling team staff will attend the state tournament.

“That’s the wrestling equivalent of having (U.S. men’s basketball coach) Mike Krzyzewski at your tournament,” Kretzer said.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 9:27 PM with the headline "Wrestling notes: Valley Center off to strong start."