It’s still extremely early in the prep wrestling season. The Bob Bailey is just the second tourney of the season for the Warriors. And, with only three seniors on the 2009 squad, Wasilla is extremely young.
But the young Warriors prevailed, winning the Bob Bailey by nearly 50 points.
  
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With only three seniors — Josh Brown, Jake Marshall and Pat Chafin — on the roster, Hayes is looking to many of his younger grapplers to help power the Warriors through the season.
Wasilla’s squad is made up predominately by underclassmen, and the bulk of the athletes on the team are in a very strong sophomore class.
Of the approximately 60 wrestlers on the team, more than 30 are sophomores, Hayes said.
Two of those 10th-graders captured individual titles at the Bob Bailey.
Sophomore Abe Fox, a state runner-up at 103 as a freshman, won the 103-pound class on Saturday.
Sophomore Caleb Pempek upset defending state champion Grant Sullivan, of Chugiak, to win the 152-pound weight class at the Bob Bailey. Junior Derek Johnson also won at 140.
Fox and Pempek are among seven Wasilla sophomores who advanced to the state tourney as freshman. Cole Miller (103), Tyler Adams (112), Jentry Diedrich (119), Caleb Hearn (119) and Ryan Pomrenke (215) also competed at the state meet last year.
That sophomore also includes Brad George and Corey Green, a transfer from Nikiski.
Fox is the defending Northern Lights Conference champion at 103, and as the state runner-up, Fox was one of five Warriors to place in the top-six of the state tourney last December.
Wasilla’s trio of state champions — Casey Katchkinska (171), Chris Crane (189) and Jed Johnson (285) — graduated.
Leading Wasilla’s junior class are Derek Johnson, Jake Johnson and Jeremy White.
Jake Johnson, a state qualifier at heavyweight last winter, is now at 215. White is at 189, and finished third at the Bob Bailey.
Derek Johnson surprised some with his win at 140 at the Bob Bailey. Johnson beat the top two wrestlers in his weight class en route to the Bob Bailey championship, the first tournament win in his career.
“Derek Johnson is a really tough kid, he was just injured his freshman and sophomore years,” Hayes said. “We knew he had it in him, but we had to get him healthy.”
Hayes has had only two of his three seniors on the mat so far. Brown, the NLC runner-up at 130 last year, was second at 135 on Saturday.
Marshall finished sixth at 160.
Chafin has been injured, but Hayes expects the senior back soon.
Much like Wasilla, Palmer also sports a very young squad.
Palmer head coach Dale Ewart said he has about 30 wrestlers on the team, and more than half are freshman.
“We’ve got a bunch of freshmen and sophomores,” Ewart said. “We’ll get them lots of matches, and it’ll pay off for us in a year or two.”
Palmer moved five athletes into the state tournament last season — a group that included Nick Stahler, the 2009 state most outstanding wrestler — but only one returns.
Senior Jered Kemp qualified for state last season at 125, and will wrestle at 130.
Junior LJ Lepanen, a state qualifier in 2007, also returns. Lepanen was a match away from qualify last season.
On Saturday, Lepanen led a small Palmer squad with a third-place finish at 125 at the Bob Bailey.
Ewart said he also expects junior Jared Logsdon (152) and senior Evan Parsons (189) to have success.
Palmer is preparing to host the Lancer Smith Memorial Invitational this week at Palmer High. More than 20 schools will compete in the two-day meet that starts Friday at PHS.
“It’s a really big tournament, probably the biggest in the state other than the state meet,” Ewart said.
The list of 4A schools includes programs from the Mat-Su Valley, Kenai Peninsula, Southeast Alaska and Anchorage areas.
Top small-schools programs such as Dillingham will also attend.
Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.
Comments
3 comment(s)Wasilla Wrestler wrote on Oct 21, 2009 10:42 AM:
Casey wrote on Oct 20, 2009 1:30 PM:
Correction wrote on Oct 20, 2009 1:55 AM: