Wrestling Places 2nd at Fowlerville
Dan Ward- Proponent of Ibuprofen
Cover photo: Glenn Armstrong

Everyday I’m hustlin’ hustlin’

If you have never experienced a Saturday tournament, Fowlerville is not the one to break your teeth on. Fowlerville is a great tourney, don’t misunderstand me, but it’s huge and crowded. There are 17 varsity teams, 22 JV teams and 18 Girls teams on 6 mats. It’s chaotic, it’s loud, it’s wrestling on steroids. St. Johns turned 41 wrestlers loose and 5 coaches tried to coral them. Have you ever dropped a bottle of ibuprofen on the floor? The pills scatter to the four winds and you have to try and find each one and get to its home? It’s something like that. It started at 9:00 and right of the start we had multiple wrestlers wrestling at the same time. It ended at 6:45. In that stretch, the coaches are lucky to find a moment of quiet. You look at the schedule and decide that you have like 10 minutes where there isn’t somebody on the mat and you make a break for the coaches room, the restroom or a quiet place somewhere. There are a lot of granola bars and Gatorade consumed on the gym floor. That bottle of ibuprofen with the random carpet fuzz from when you dropped it, has become your best friend. There are fun moments, watching kids win their first medal or their first match. Joking with the officials, harassing the other coaches are activities that I enjoy. There are heart wrenching moments too, watching a kid lose on a last second takedown in a match they were cruising in. Seeing kids go down with injuries is tough too. All and all there are a million different ways to spend a Saturday in December. I’ve spent the better part of 39 years in a gym on a Saturday and I can’t think of very many things I’d rather do, still it’s a grind.

This year St. Johns Varsity improved on last year’s 4th place finish with a 2nd place finish.
St. Johns was out paced by Fowlerville 263 to 195.5 and out paced Stevenson 195.5 to 145.
The Girls Varsity placed 11th, which is not bad considering we only brought 4 girls and only one of them has high school experience. There were no team scores kept for the JV.

Placing for the JV were:
Noah Demo going 1-2 and placing 3rd
Keegan Hamilton going 1-2 and placing 3rd
Aedin Bensonen going 1-2 and placing 3rd
Garrett Bloom going 1-2 and placing 3rd
Camerron Lange placing 2-1 and placing 2nd
Ty Smith going 2-1 and placing 2nd
Michael Grow going 2-1 and placing 2nd
Jesse Mason going 2-1 and placing 2nd
Connor Skaryd going 3-1 and placing 2nd
Owen Parker going 3-1 and placing 2nd
Roman Berkhousen going 2-1 and placing 2nd
Doug Thurston going 3-0 and place 1st
Austin Clark going 3-0 and placing 1st
Zayne Martinez going 3-0 and placing 1st
Jackson Armstrong going 3-0 and placing 1st
Dray Findlay going 4-0 and placing 1st
Colton Robbins going 4-0 and placing 1st
Ayden Scheffler going 4-0 and placing 1st
Ethan Schotthoefer going 3-0 and placing 1st.

Results for the Varsity Girls were:
Olivia Pettigrew going 2-2 and placing 3rd
Haley Prohaska going 1-3 and placing 4th
Lori Norris going 3-2 and placing 7th
Addyson Ney going 0-2 and placing 2nd.

Varsity Boys placed 2nd overall. Results for the boys were:
Jameson Halsey going 2-3 and placing 10th
Reagan Ward going 2-3 and placing 4th
Tristan Densmore going 4-1 and placing 2nd
Tyler Riedel going 3-2 and placing 7th
Xavier Benjamin going 2-3 and placing 10th
Logan Finn going 2-3 and placing 8th
Hayden Billings going 3-2 and placing 4th
Bennett Ward going 1-4 and placing 9th
Fletcher Whitford Injured defaulted 3x
Brady Heibeck going 5-0 and placing 1st
Jaxson Densmore going 4-1 and placing 2nd
Will Wharton going 3-2 and placing 5th
Brody Abendroth going 5-0 and placing 1st
Greyson Osborne going 4-1 and placing 2nd
Gavin Moreno going 3-2 and placing 3rd
Abram Matice going 1-4 and placing 5th

St. Johns JV returns to the mat on Tuesday December 17th at DeWitt High School. The Boys and Girls Varsity will travel to Haslett on Wednesday December 18th.