Nate Anderson
FRANKLIN — After losing most of their wrestlers from last year’s Class 3A state duals championship team to graduation, Columbus East was not one of the seven teams originally invited to this year’s state duals event.
Then, when the eighth team was picked to fill out the 3A bracket, the Olympians again were passed over.
It wasn’t until New Haven dropped out because of injuries that East was added to the tournament. Saturday, the Olympians made the most of that invitation by making it all the way to the finals and finishing state runner-up after a 43-31 loss to Mishawaka.
“The margin of error to win one of these is just razor thin,” East coach Chris Cooper said. “We came up a little bit short, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. Honestly, graduating as much as we did last year, and it took us three tries to even get invited to this event, to make it back to the finals is incredible. Second is not as much fun, but we’ll take it.”
The fourth-seeded Olympians began the day with a 36-30 quarterfinal win against fifth-seeded Floyd Central, overcoming a 30-27 deficit with a pin by Tommy Morrill and 220 pounds and a decision by Patrick McMahon at 285. East then dispatched eighth-seeded Terre Haute South, which had upset top-seed Floyd Central, 35-23 in the semifinals.
“I thought we wrestled tough against Floyd,” Cooper said. “We wrestled amazing against Terre Haute. Those are some great teams there. Terre Haute, our best kids and their best kids were all in different spots, so I knew it was going to be a lot of falls both ways.”
Tommy Morrill
The championship match against second-seeded Mishawaka began at 220 pounds, and the Olympians jumped on the Cavemen from the start. Pins by Morrill in 29 seconds, McMahon in 59 seconds and Talon Jessup in 5:24 at 106 stoked East to an early 18-0 lead.
Mishawaka came back with pins at 113 and 120 before Liam Krueger scored a 9-1 major decision at 126 to give the Olympians a 22-12 advantage. The Cavemen then got a major decision at 132 and an overtime decision at 138 before East’s Nate Anderson won a 3-1 decision at 145 to make it 25-19.
Mishawaka scored three consecutive pins at 152, 160 and 170 to take a 37-25 lead. East got a pin from Jackson Fox at 182 to cut it to 37-31, but the Cavemen finished with a pin at 195.
“I know the team set its sights pretty high,” Morrill said. “I know we definitely wanted to win this and become two-timers, but for us to come this far with almost an entire new varsity lineup I think is pretty great. Of course, we would have liked to be No. 1, but today just wasn’t the day.”
Liam Krueger
“It’s incredible,” Krueger added. “We have a whole new team this year, and we were able to do just about as good as we did last year. We dropped one at the end, but we’ll come back next year with a new team and have the same results as we did this year.”
Morrill, Krueger and Anderson all went 3-0 for the day. Jessup, Gage Rutan (120), Bo Wagner (138), Tyler Lake (170/182), Fox (182/195) and McMahon all went 2-1.
The Olympians, who saw their Hoosier Hills Conference championship streak ended by Floyd Central last year, will host this year’s HHC meet on Saturday.
“I’m just super proud of our kids’ effort,” Cooper said. “I think our practices every week have gotten better this entire season, and this week, they were phenomenal. The kids were very focused, even guys that haven’t had a ton of success yet just were super focused, and I think it reflected in our effort today. The effort was defintely there. We’ll take a day off and regroup and then go try to win our conference next Saturday.”
