Kearney wrestling dominates again at Lee’s Summit North Invitational
Kearney didn’t just want to win the Lee’s Summit North Invitational wrestling tournament this season, it wanted to win big.
Just as the Bulldogs did the previous two seasons.
Kearney won six of eight matches in the finals and nine medals overall in racking up 269.5 team points on Saturday, well ahead of runner-up Liberty and third-place Lee’s Summit North in the 16-team field. The 96.5-point margin of victory may be impressive, but fell a little short of what the Bulldogs had in mind.
“Last year we won by 100 points, so we said that was our goal again,” Kearney coach Jake Hill said. “We knew we had kids coming out in every weight class capable of medaling.”
Kearney, which finished six points shy of second place in last year’s Missouri Class 3 state tournament, has a deep squad again, and it displayed that depth in the two-day tournament. And the Bulldogs came in short-handed: Their 160-pound entry was injured, and their heavyweight was away on football recruiting visit.
“We’ve got depth this year,” Hill said. “Having 12 guys competing today and having eight of them in the finals and coming away with nine medals is a lot of fun.”
Kearney didn’t exactly overwhelm the competition in the finals though. Every victory came by decision, two of them in skin-of-the-teeth fashion. Devan Lewis had to ride Gavin Gross of Odessa the entire second period before eking out an escape in the third for a 1-0 victory in the 132-pound division final.
And in the 195-pound division final, Brett Mordecai needed a takedown with 5 seconds left in the match to beat Jon Trowbridge of Basehor-Linwood 4-3.
Kearney’s other champions were Garrett Deason at 106 pounds, Clayton Singh at 120, Caden Green at 138 and Ethan Locke at 170.
“It’s fun to come into our first individual tournament and see that much success,” Hill said. “Saw a lot of good things at an individual level.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2017 at 7:37 PM with the headline "Kearney wrestling dominates again at Lee’s Summit North Invitational."