Kenton Wrestling Finishes 7th Place at WBL; Handell and Blevins Runner-ups

The Kenton Wrestling team travelled to Ottawa-Glandorf Saturday to compete in the WBL championships. Kenton scored forty team points to place seventh with three wrestlers making the podium. Matthew Handell and Isaac Blevins placed 2nd and Isaiah Mundy finished 4th. Wapakoneta dominated the tournament with 208.5 total points with six individual champions. Celina placed 2nd with 163 points narrowly over third placed Defiance with 162.5 points.
Senior, Matthew Handell, was given a first round bye and then defeated Issac Posada of Celina 10-3 to advance to the 215 lb weight class finals. There he met Tyler Kiessling of Defiance in a tough back and forth match. Handell gave up the first takedown to Kiessling, but was able to eventually get up and out and get a takedown of his own before the first period ended leading 4-3. Handell chose to start the second period nuetral after Kiessling deferred. Handell improved his lead to 7-3 with another quick takedown. However, Kiessling managed to escape before the end of the period and then take Handell down with a slide by at the beginning of the last period to even the score 7-7. Handell escaped again, but was taken down with another Kiessling slide by with less than thirty seconds left. The action was taken out of bounds with the score at 10-8 in Kiesslings favor and only twenty one seconds left in the match. Unfortunately, time expired and Handell was unable to score any more points and earned runner-up honors for the tournament.
Isaac Blevins, competing at 165 lbs, started a little slow in his first and second round matches; but ended them dominantly with an 18-3 Tech-Fall over Braeden Stiles of Shawnee and a late pin over Abel Paxton of Defiance (5:28). Like Handell, Blevins was up in his finals match (5-3) against Dawson Ware of Wapakoneta, but gave up a late takedown to his back in the third period and wasn’t able to recover. Ware finished the match on top by a score of 13-7 leaving Blevins settling for second at the tournament.
At 144 lbs, freshman Isaiah Mundy earned wins over Ethan Boulis of Bath (TF 16-1) and Gauge Vaughn of Wapakaneta (4-2) to face three time state qualifier Mason Ducat of Defiance in the semi-finals. Ducat defeated Mundy by 17-1 TF and eventually won the tournament over Alejandro Reyes of Shawnee by pin (1:10). Mundy dropped down to the consolation rounds and defeated Noah Bruce of St. Marys by a Maj. Dec. 17-8 before a rematch with Vaughn of Wapakoneta for the third place match. Unfortunately, this time Vaughn was able to control the entire bout and defeated Mundy by TF 17-1.
The Sectional tournament at Galion next weekend is at a new site for Kenton. There they will be facing wrestlers from Clear Fork, Lexington, Madison Comprehensive, Norwalk, Ontario, Upper Sandusky, Sandusky Perkins and Vermilion. Top four from each weight class will advance to the District tournament at Norwalk.

Individual Results:
113 – Sierra Vanksy (0-2)
120 – Logan Kapanka (0-2)
138 – Karson Davis (0-2)
144 – Isaiah Mundy (3-2); 4th Place
165 – Isaac Blevins (2-1); 2nd Place
175 – Michael Hare (0-2)
190 – Isaiah Poland (0-2)
215 – Mathew Handell (1-1); 2nd Place
285 – Brison Laubis (0-2)

School Place Points

Wapakoneta High School 1 208.5