Sports Writer
OLATHE — Friday night when the Olathe High wrestling team beat Gunnison, 54-13, they didn’t officially win the Class 3A Western Slope League, but the Pirates put themselves in a great position to do so.
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The Pirates are undefeated in the league and if they beat Cedaredge and Hotchkiss next week they’ll win the WSL.
Maybe more importantly, the Pirates seem to be approaching their peak.
“Coach was saying at this time of the season we can’t be going down, we have to be going up and obviously we’re showing that,” Olathe’s 135-pounder Dane Axtell said.
The Pirates definitely showed up to wrestle their rivals Friday afternoon.
“It’s good that we have the rivalry because they push us and we know they’re going to be tough; we got to come out and wrestle like we want to, wrestle like we need to,” Olathe’s 145-pounder Cody Burch said.
“It feels really good. All the football players that wrestle wanted to come out here and show them up a little bit.”
The dual was close for the six weights, then the Pirates pulled away from Gunnison.
Burch won the first match by pin. He put a Kansas on Tab Hidreth and threw him on his back like he has a bail of hay.
At 152 pounds, there were a lot of counters and counters to counters, but Dustin Cadwell ended up beating Olathe’s Wes Yarnell, 13-6.
Points were hard to come by at 160 pounds, but Olathe’s Chris Diaz won all the scrambles to beat Justin Grosse by a major decision, 10-1.
Gunnison responded with a major decision of its own at 171 pounds, making the dual score 10-7.
At 189 pounds, Kyle Martinez put David Vader on his back three times to win by a technical fall, 16-1.
The Cowboys came back with a pin at 215 pounds, but the Pirates won every match after that.
In overtime of the heavyweight match, Olathe’s Tyler Hawk first rode out John Kuykendall. Then in the second 30-second period, Hawk got a reversal. He let Kuykendall escape and won the match on his feet, 4-3.
Gunnison forfeited at 103 pounds, then the Pirates got three pins in a row.
Casey Bollinger pinned Ramon Recinos with a cradle in one minute, 5 seconds at 112 pounds.
At 119 pounds, Bryson Gray started running a chicken wing, then switched to an arm bar to put Calyn Miller on his back. Miller started to fight out, but Gray settled in with a reverse half to pin him in 3:52.
Jaime Goza took Josh Roper down and put him on his back with a funky stack, getting the pin 42 seconds at 125’s.
Gunnison forfeited at 130’s, but the last two matches of the dual were barn burners.
Axtell took an early 5-0 lead, but in the second period Levi Tredway reversed Axtell to his back to tie the match at five.
Axtell, however, got reversals with switches at the end of the second and beginning of third periods to build a 9-5 lead. Tredway got a late reversal, but Axtell held on to win the match, 9-7.
“He beat me 4-2 and then pinned me last year, so I was pretty excited to beat him tonight,” Axtell said.
In the night’s last match, Olathe’s Lyle Vannest took a 2-1 lead into the final period. No wrestler scored again, but Vannest came close to putting Colton Garcia on his back multiple times and finished the match in complete control.
“All the kids wrestled well, up and down the line,” Starbuck said. “Even where we were a little bit overmatched with some of their better kids, we stayed in there and battled. We’ll build on this and hopefully show up with the same intensity from here on out.”
The Pirates competed in Centauri’s dual meet tournament Saturday. See Monday’s Daily Press to see how they did.
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