Clovers place fourth, 15 headed to regional

Monday, January 31, 2011
Cloverdale's Donnie Helterbrand won the 145-weight class at Saturday's Avon Sectional. He will be one of 15 wrestlers representing Putnam County at this Saturday's Mooresville Regional. Wrestling photo gallery featured at www.bannergraphic.com/gallery/6841

AVON -- When tournament time comes the motto is live to fight another day. Following Saturday's Avon wrestling sectional, 15 local wrestlers will be packing their bags once more and making the trek south to the Mooresville regional.

Cloverdale was the top finishing Putnam County team, leap frogging and eventually edging Greencastle by a half a point, 111.50-111.00, when all was said and done. South Putnam was ninth with 53 points and North Putnam was 10th with 32 points.

The Clovers also earned the most individual champions on the day. They had three champions, while GHS had one and North Putnam had one.

Winning for Cloverdale was Shawn Shipp (112), Jeremy Boldman (119) and Donnie Helterbrand (145). North Putnam's winner was Tyler Ruble (103) and Greencastle's winner was Jesse Vermillion (215).

Greencastle head coach Matt McComish was impressed with how his team performed Saturday and has happy with the wrestler who advanced. He said now it's a matter of prepping those guys for regional.

"We got seven through, so we've got to get those guys ready for next week. I know some of them are disappointed with the results and they wanted to be in the finals and they wanted to place higher, but we wrestled well today."

Even with the success his Tiger Cubs had Saturday, McComish said they're still hungry for more.

"I don't think they're happy yet and I'm not quite happy yet either," he said. "We make it to semi-state, we do well in regional and we can start looking back at the season a little bit. But the ultimate goal is to always make it to state and I know we have a couple guys who are looking at it right now, but we have to take care of one week at a time."

Ruble was the county's first winner crown on Saturday defeating Tri-West's Adam Boles by fall. Following Ruble, Cloverdale took the next two weight classes.

Shawn Shipp defeated Avon's Nick Etienne in overtime 7-2. Boldman followed suit and took down Plainfield's Ben Macri by a major decision 15-6.

At 145, CHS senior Donnie Helterbrand pinned Plainfield's Tyler Williams to come away with the Clovers' last individual championship.

Closing out the Putnam County champs was Greencastle's Jesse Vermillion at 215. As he had at the conference meet, Vermillion had to pull off a win in overtime and he did just that. He defeated Avon's Quincy Pirtle, 3-1, with just two seconds remaining in overtime.

The Clovers' head coach Steve Livingston was happily surprised by his team's finish.

"Getting fourth place as a team leaving here is awesome," he said. "We obviously didn't think that coming in. We ended up forfeiting three weight classes, which has kind of been our plague all year and what's held us back. The guys wrestled their butts off.

"For us to go into this tournament with the teams here and get fourth -- I thought one day we would be there, I didn't think we were there yet," Livingston added. "It just says how hard our kids are working and what we're accomplishing in the room."

He also said now that his Clovers have achieve a top five sectional finish, he's going to have to go back to the drawing board for some new goals.

"When I first got hired on at Cloverdale I had some five year goals and this is my third year as the head coach -- placing top five at the sectional was a five year goal for me, so I have to go back and reevaluate our goals now," Livingston said.

Also advancing will be Cloverdale's Eldin Hesselgrave (2nd) and Matt Hall (2nd); Greencastle's Nick Pingleton (3rd), Kody Collins (3rd), Tyler Hudson (2nd), Carter Lewis (3rd), Nikko Hayden (4th) and Will Mobley (3rd) and South Putnam's Jesse Gardner (3rd) and Tanner Thompson (3rd).

Livingston said his team used the sting of the conference tournament loss to get where they were Saturday.

"It's a community thing. It's a family coming together to get our coaches in there helping out, get our kids working hard and moral is high. Obviously we didn't get what we wanted at conference and we came back and got things turned around and got moral up where it needed to be. I think we wrestled great," he said.

Coaches from North Putnam and South Putnam were unavailable for comment following the match.

All advancing wrestlers will compete at the Mooresville Regional Saturday at 9 a.m.

At Avon

Avon Wrestling Sectional

1. Avon 191.50, 2. Danville 182.50, 3. Brownsburg 167.50, 4. Cloverdale 111.50, 5. Greencastle 111.00, 6. Plainfield 110.50, 7. Cascade 98.00, 8. Tri-West 96.00, 9. South Putnam 53.00, 10. North Putnam 32

Sectional Champions

103 -- Tyler Ruble (North Putnam)

112 -- Shawn Shipp (Cloverdale)

119 -- Jeremy Boldman (Cloverdale)

145 -- Donnie Helterbrand (Cloverdale)

215 -- Jesse Vermillion (Greencastle)

Advancing Wrestlers

Cloverdale -- Eldin Hesselgrave, Matt Hall

Greencastle -- Nick Pingleton, Kody Collins, Tyler Hudson, Carter Lewis, Nikko Hayden, Will Mobley

South Putnam -- Jesse Gardner, Tanner Thompson