12 county wrestlers place at ECOL tournament

WARSAW - On Saturday afternoon buses and cars flooded into River View junior high school for the 2016 ECOL wrestling championships.

After about six hours of wrestling, River View finished in seventh place with 50 points and Coshocton finished in fourth with 108 points.

"We wrestled OK. There is a lot of good competition here between Claymont, Dover, New Philly and Coshocton it's really good and it's good for our kids," River View coach Devin Klein said. "At some points we could have done better, but we didn't wrestle too bad."

"You want to win them all, but the kids did alright, " Coshocton coach Tim Ward said. "Claymont, Dover and New Philly have good teams. When you match up against those guys you have to win those matches, we just came up on the south side of it."

Combined the two county schools had 12 placers in the league championships, highlighted by second place finishers: River View's Braiden Davis (113) and Coshocton's Kyle Bergeron (120), Sam Fortune (126), Usman Suerkulov (145) and Jeremy Bresciani (182).

Coshocton also added a third place finish by Brennen Alverson (152) and fourth place finishes from Tanner Ward (132) and Caleb Meek (170).

Alverson was the only Redskin wrestler to win his finals match, while Ward was disappointed in some of the finals he was proud of the team overall.

"We had 12 weight classes filled and we had seven placers, so over half the kids placed, but we just didn't wrestle our best in finals," Ward said. "I think three or four years ago we only had four, so I mean some of the guys are stepping up."

River View also added a two third place finishers in Ki Wright (138) and Rann Zimmer (106), as well as two fourth place finishers in Brody Bookless (160) and Nick Jacob (120). While, those wrestlers may have wanted to place higher, the only senior of the Black Bears placers is Ki Wright, which Klein said will will be good for the future of the Black Bears

"They all wanted to win it, which should be every kids goal. Maybe this will push them to work a bot harder the next two weeks," Klein said. "This will give them a good idea of where they stand in the league."

Both Coshocton and River View have one more match before sectionals begin.

"It's all out. This is it," Ward said. "We will get as many guys as we can to districts, possibly win sectionals then have fun from then on. A lot of these guys need to make districts to have a good season."

"Some of these teams we will see at our sectional. Gives them something to look forward to, whether it's getting some revenge or working harder to beat a kid that beat the," Klein said.

cteaguerob@gannett.com

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Twitter: @cj_teague