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Cougars double up Eagles on senior night
BAINBRIDGE – Just three days after the WIC Wrestling Meet, North Putnam and South Putnam met Tuesday night to kick off the final preparations for sectional wrestling in two weeks.
With a number of forfeits, the Cougars comfortably won the dual meet 54-27 though the Eagles won five of the eight matches on hand.
“Some of the matches went our way,” North Putnam head coach Michael Murphy said. “The heavyweight match was a tough one but it’s hard to beat someone four-straight times.
“All in all, it went pretty well. We had to bump a couple of kids around with some guys out, which made it a little hard on our lineup.”
“We looked a lot better tonight,” South Putnam head coach Antonio Hernandez said. “We got better the in the last couple of days and looked better than we did on Saturday.
“Saturday was a humbling experience for a lot of our guys. There were a lot of tears, guys were down on the bus ride back and down (Monday) but I’m extremely proud of how they bounced back (Tuesday).
“We lost on the scoreboard with a few forfeits but they are a resilient bunch, they’re a young group and I’m extremely proud of them,” Hernandez added.
The first match of the dual came at 132 pounds, where South Putnam’s Gabe Thomas won by fall over Jackson Andrews in the opening period.
Logan Tomaw added a second fall in the third period over Kyler Hankins at 138 pounds before Josh Taylor won the first fall for North Putnam at 145 pounds with a win over Harry Eaglin.
Braden Glaze and Jacob Land added back-to-back falls at 152 and 160 pounds for the Cougars over Chaz Hall and Caleb Heet respectively.
The last three matches all went the way of the Eagles as Ethan Harcourt and Aiden Beadles both picked up second-period falls at 195 and 220 pounds over Jordan Bridges and Paxton O’Brien respectively.
In the final bout, Preston Pelfrey picked up a 2-1 win over Trevor Roseboom at 285 pounds, the first time the South Putnam freshman had defeated the North Putnam senior in four meetings this season.
Owen O’Hair (106), Corie Stancombe (113), Kaleb Walton (120), Wesley Murphy (126), Lucas Murphy (170) and Jack Parker (182) all received forfeits for North Putnam.
South Putnam has two duals remaining before the Avon Sectional next weekend, visiting Parke Heritage Thursday and Brebeuf Jesuit next Monday while North Putnam will turn its full attention to sectional prep.
“We have to work on our conditioning a little bit,” Hernandez said. “We need to be smarter wrestling.
“We did that a little better tonight, working on some of our positioning that got us into trouble Saturday. That much improvement in such a short amount of time makes me happy and our goals are 100 percent on sectionals. We have a couple of duals left but we’re looking to advance our guys as far as we can come sectional time, especially our seniors.”
“This was our last meet before sectional,” Murphy said. “For now, we’re working on getting aggressive, getting our conditioning down and taking care of any injuries we have.
“The biggest thing is being ready for the sectional. Our mindset and conditioning needs to be ready for four or five matches in a day.”