Titans claim city wrestling bragging rights
There’s no official city championship at stake when Lee’s Summit, Lee’s Summit North and Lee’s Summit West have their annual three-way dual meet — just bragging rights, but that’s often more than enough.
The bragging rights this year belong to West, which beat North 52-22 and Lee’s Summit 54-30 on Wednesday night at West.
After falling short last year in what amounted to a three-way tie, Titans coach Adam West said his team was more determined to show it was the best of the three city schools.
“We talked about in the room, that this is something that we want to win every year, if we can keep it going,” West said. “And the guys have a lot of pride. They want those bragging rights. Kids want that; I want that.”
Coach West had a young squad last year during his first season, and the Titans are still a little green, but now he has four returning state qualifiers the room: juniors Morgan Potts and Jacob Moore along with seniors Corbin Copsey and Zach Moore. All four swept matches in which they had opponents.
Potts had one of the toughest matches of the evening against Jaden Duran of North at 138 pounds.
“Last weekend, we were in a tough tournament,” West added. “We had to fight full matches against good guys, so I think that prepared him to wrestle a full match tonight.”
Duran, also a state qualifier last season, battled Potts even except for a quick near fall at the end of the second period. That was enough to let Potts escape with a 4-1 decision.
“I knew it was going to be a tough match coming in,” Potts said. “I just managed to catch him and keep wrestling the rest of the match and got the win.”
Lee’s Summit West also racked up four pins against North, which was missing several varsity wrestlers due to injury. Among those missing was junior Adrian Castaneda, who placed second at 160 pounds during last weekend’s Lee’s Summit North Invitational.
“I would like to wrestle them again with our full lineup, but tonight they were the better team,” North coach Mick Cronk said. “We’re fighting some injuries right now, but we had some junior-varsity kids step up tonight.”
North recorded six pins against Lee’s Summit during the evening’s first dual and beat the Tigers 57-21.
Senior Grant Parrish had two pins for the Tigers at 170 pounds, and sophomore Lorenzo Turney won two decisions at 113 pounds — including a last-second, come-from-behind victory over North’s Caden Schweitzer.
“I thought we might have a better chance at a couple of other weights but West and North are both good teams,” Lee’s Summit coach Jay McGovern said. “They’re salty all through the lineup. I thought we competed in the spots we were supposed to and then some we were just over matched. We’re just real young.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 3:39 PM with the headline "Titans claim city wrestling bragging rights."