Tiger grapplers fare well at home

Nevada's Tanner Charles works to put Ruskin's Jacob Robirds on his back ina 112-pound match during Tuesday's quad wrestling meet at Nevada High School. --Ralph Pokorny/Daily Mail

"A couple little things here and there and it could have been 3-0, not 2-1." Despite a short roster that featured seven open weight classes, Nevada Tigers head wrestling coach Devin White still came out of the first quadrangular meet at Wynn Gymnasium Tuesday night with a lot to be happy about.

Out of the eight wrestlers that were eligible for competition, six finished the night undefeated and amassed a total of 12 pins between them. Most notable of those five undefeated wrestlers was freshman Slade Styles. Styles finished the night with three pins and spent a total of just 2 minutes, 42 seconds on the mat throughout the night.

"He's going to have a phenomenal year," White said of the 103-pound freshman. "He's really stepping up."

Out of those three matches, Styles beat both Waylon Anderson of Clinton and Ruskin's Jonathan White in under 35 seconds. In his final match of the night, Styles squared off against Marshfield's Sean McCorkle and was ultimately faced with his toughest challenge of the night, but still needed just 1:51 to pick up the victory by pin.

Five other Tigers finished the night undefeated as well, including sophomore Tanner Charles, senior Dominic Habjan, sophomore Zach Shepherd, senior Scotty Bough and senior Todd Brier.

The Tigers showed several strong individual performances on their way to nearly winning two of the three duals they wrestled on the night. The Tigers began the night against a Clinton team that had nearly as many open weight classes as they did and the Tigers took full advantage. Nearly every wrestler the Tigers put on the mat against the Cardinals, working their way to a 39-37 loss.

"A couple things could have gone right for us and we'd have won the Clinton dual," White said. The Cardinals were able to give the Tigers a number of highly competitive individual opponents and picked up just one win that was not the result of an open weight class. That win proved to be all the Cardinals needed as the Tigers came up just two points short of the team victory.

Against Ruskin, the Tigers were not at nearly as significant a disadvantage as the Golden Eagles had a very short roster of their own. The Tigers once again took full advantage of the matches they had and were able to pick up four pins in five matches to earn a 45-24 team victory.

The only win for the Tigers that did not come as a result of a pin was Habjan's match against Ruskin's Jonathan Madden. Madden is a true 119-pounder, but stepped up into the 125-pound slot as a result of Nevada's opening at that weight in order to give Habjan and Madden both a chance on the mat.

Madden put up a strong performance and was able to remain even with Habjan for the majority of the match, but ultimately fell by a final score of 4-1 in a very hard-fought match. "He (Habjan) wrestled a tough kid," White said. "Dom just wrestled at his pace and did his thing and came out on top."

Ruskin was never able to get anything going and despite gaining a 24-point advantage before ever taking the mat, ended the night with a 21-point loss. "When you have six or seven open slots and you still beat a team by 21 points, that's saying something," White said.

In their final dual of the night, the Tigers squared off against Marshfield and faced their biggest handicap of the night as they faced a team with a full roster for the first time. The Tigers continued to wrestle hard as they had all night, but were simply unable to overcome that disadvantage and ultimately fell by a total team score of 48-36 thanks to Marshfield taking two victories by pin.

The Tigers are now set to continue the dual season tomorrow as they head out on the road to Harrisonville High School before getting back into tournament competition on Saturday at the Carl Junction Invitational.