GRANITE CITY – Both Alton and Granite City's wrestling teams had good outings Monday as the 55th William “Red” Schmitt Holiday Wrestling Tournament got under way at Granite City's Memorial Gym complex.
The Warriors moved five wrestlers into Tuesday's championship bracket, while the Redbirds had four advance into the tournament's Gold brackets; both teams will have wrestlers place no lower than eighth in that bracket.
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Granite finished the day in 12th place in the team standings of the 24-team tournament, scoring 222 points; the Redbirds are right behind with 191 points. Lafayette of St. Louis County leads the tournament with 398.5 points, 22 points ahead of Staley of North Kansas City. Neosho, a southwestern Missouri school who has won four of the last six tournaments, including the last two, stands third at 351 points, followed by Christian Brothers of Memphis with 305.5 and Plainfield South of northern Illinois rounding out the top five with 289.5.
“We wrestled hard and battled all day,” said Warrior coach George Kirgan. “The kids kept working hard all day and they're coachable, and that's all you can ask of them.
“We had some really good performances from Korinithan Nabors at heavyweight; he beat a couple of seeded wrestlers, went unbeaten and he wasn't seeded. Wilyonde Bell had a good day at 145 as a six-seed (Bell was coming off a fifth-place finish at the Kansas City Stampede tournament right before the holidays) and John Hirsch defeated two of the top seeds at 138.”
Alton wrestlers who advanced into the Gold bracket included Connor Broyles at 132, who went unbeaten on the day, highlighted by pins over Huntley's Riley Brands in 58 seconds and Joe Schmidt of CBC in 1:58; Alejandro Lopez at 145, who went 4-1 on the day, highlighted by a 4:43 pin of Sam Donovan of Triad and a 28-second pin of Nick Hoke Ruiz of South Elgin; Keontay Holmes at 182, going 4-1 on the day, including 17-2 technical fall wins over Lafayette's Austin Wagner and Plainfield South's Lalo Palomares; and Keondrick Russell at 195, who was 4-1 with a 1:38 pin of Kaleb Port of Triad and a 1:15 fall over Wentzville Timberland's Tyler Brooks.
Hirsch went 3-2 on the day, highlighted by an 11-4 decision over Wildwood's Adam Cook; Bell was 4-1 on the day with three pins, the fastest one a 1:47 fall over Munaji Shahid of McCluer North; Joe Garcia was 4-1 at 160, including a 6-4 overtime win over Kase Wulff of Christian Brothers-Memphis in his final qualifying bout of the day; Kyle Thompson went 4-1 at 170, including three falls, the quickest being a 1:10 pin of TJ Street of Mount Zion; and Nabors' unbeaten run through his bouts, including a 1-0 win over Staley's Eric Hoeper and three falls, including a 59-second pin of Mount Zion's Tyler McCleery.
Bouts in all three brackets (Gold, Silver and Bronze) were held Tuesday. RiverBender.com will have full results on Wednesday from the meet.
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