SUMMARY
It may have taken four trips to do it, but Lockport finally won the Fox "Ron Sauer" Dual Team Tournament, hosted by Fox Senior High School in Arnold, Missouri, and they did it in dominant fashion. Posting a 7-0 record over the course of Friday night and Saturday, the Porters dominated their competition, outscoring their opponents 422-70.
Friday night, the tournament began with three pool-round matchups. Lockport defeated Collinsville (IL) 63-9 in the first dual, before picking up a 60-9 decision over the host, Fox (MO) in the second dual of the night. The third dual against Holt was a rematch of last year's championship dual, which left a sour taste in the mouths of the Lockport wrestlers. Although Holt lacked the firepower that they had last year, having graduated 12 seniors, they are always a capable team. Lockport went out and wrestled hard, racking up a 60-12 victory - an especially nice win for the seniors, who lost to Holt in both their freshman and junior campaigns.
On Saturday, the pool format turned into a 16-team tournament format. Lockport defeated Helias (MO) by a 71-6 margin in the first dual, before a 55-15 handling of Francis Howell North (MO), who took 3rd in Class 4 in Missouri last season. In the semifinals, Lockport was set to square off against the only other team that has defeated them at this event - Edwardsville (IL). In what was without a doubt the best team effort put together this season, the Porters absolutely dominated Edwardsville, 62-3.
This pushed Lockport into the finals, for the third time in fourth year. Looks like the fourth time is the charm, as Lockport built up a huge lead, withstood a couple tough losses, and defeated Whitfield (MO) by a 51-15 score. Whitfield, it should be noted, is ranked as top team in Missouri's Class 1, the smallest of the four classes of Missouri Wrestling, and finished second as a team in that division last season.
The team turned in fantastic performances across the board. The Porters posted an 83-15 record in individual bouts. Out of those 83 wins, Lockport had:
- 34 pins
- 10 technical falls
- 15 major decisions
- 12 decisions
- 12 forfeits
Individually, three porters posted perfect 7-0 records on the tournament. The Brothers Ramos, Matt at 106 and Brandon at 138, and Ronald Tucker, who made his season debut this weekend, at 285. They were not the only Porters to post undefeated records, however. Anthony Molton (113) went 6-0 including a win over highly touted Edwardsville freshman Luke Odom. Payton Fernandes (195/220) and Yousif Salah (195/220) also went 6-0, while Trevell Timmons (160) posted a 5-0 record on the tournament.
Four other Porters went undefeated in limited action over the course of the tournament; Chandler Proszek, making his season debut, posted a 4-0 record at 170/182. Malik Daghash (160) continued his great early season, going 2-0, and John Pacetti also posted a 2-0 record at 152, the first varsity wins of his career. At 113, Jake Lukaszczyk made his varsity debut on Friday night, winning 6-1. Lukaszczyk showed a huge amount of grit in that one match - he suffered a broken hand in the first period, but fought through it and came away with a win, having to wrestle for about five minutes with only one hand.
Brendan Ramsey posted a 5-2 record at 132 this weekend, while Nick Dado went 4-1 at 170/182 (although, realistically, he should have been 5-0 - an illegal headscissor against him was not called during his overtime loss, let alone some could-have-been takedowns). James Pieradozzi (120) and Baylor Fernandes (145) almost came away with perfect records, falling just short at a 6-1 record each. Pierandozzi lost to a two-time Missouri State Champion from Whitfield, while Baylor lost to Devin Schwartzkopf of Francis Howell North, 8-2. Schwartzkopf is ranked #8 at 132 by FloWrestling and #16 at 132 by InterMat. Zach Reese (152) also came close, earning himself a 4-1 record on the weekend, including a fall and a major decision.
BOX SCORES
I'm not going to post 7 duals worth of box scores... but I will give you the link to Lockport's results on TrackWrestling. If you want the page for the tournament as a whole, you should click this link instead.
Take note: Not all of these results are entirely accurate - particularly scores and/or times. Sadly, Anthony Moton did not record a fall in 0:03 in his first match, although that would have been awesome. But he did record a fall. So, bear that in mind. These were being posted incorrectly all tournament, hence the Twitter being off a bit on some results, as the scoreboards weren't always accurate in person either.
PHOTOS
I took nearly 1000 photos this weekend... so it's going to take a few days to get these up and posted. Editing takes a while. Although, roughly half of those will end up being deleted because they aren't good enough or refs get in the way or whatever else. They'll be up, just in a couple days! They'll be under the "Tournament" folder rather than the "Duals" folder . . . which I need to create still.
For this season's gallery homepage, just click this link here!