Wrestling has been hard at it since the new year started. It is one of those sports that do not get much time off and have to continue to grind through the Christmas season. The Zebras worked hard and have wrestled a lot over the past few weeks. It started a few weeks ago as the Zebras hosted the Coweta Tigers and the Ft. Gibson Tigers. The team beat up on Ft. Gibson but came up a little short against the #3 ranked Coweta tigers. That was just the beginning of the longest few weeks of the year.
The next week the boys and girls traveled to Mid-West City to wrestle in the Carl Albert Invitational. The girl’s team started slow on Friday, but showed up Saturday and wrestled very well. They finished with 5 girls bringing home to 4 finishes, Kat Molester, Abby Tietz, Kort Sansom, Keekee Bacon, and Karly Shisler. The girls are having a good year and will be competing on January 19th at Bixby and January 27th at the Sand Springs tournament.
The boy’s teams also went to the Carl Albert Tournament and had quite a bit of success. The success was led by Cooper Zickefoose. Cooper wrestled very well and beat a returning state qualifier from Duncan in the semis to reach the finals. In the finals, we ran into the #1 ranked 150-pound wrestler in the state and he competed hard but came up short to finish in the runner-up position. The Zebras also had 2 3rd place finishers, Maddox Jackson and Josh Felciano. Both Maddox and Josh spent the weekend doing some of their best wrestling of the year and setting themselves up for success down the stretch. Mason Giliespie came home with a 4th place finish. Mason felt that it was a good gauge on where he is and what he needs to do to get better. Lastly, Cameron Braswell wrestled extremely well on his way to a 5th-place finish. Overall it was a pretty good weekend, and I am proud of both the boys’ and girls’ teams.
Our last competition was district duals on the 17th. The Zebras routed Edison and Sapulpa in their first two duals. In the third dual, the Zebras spilt matches 7 to 7 but fell to Pryor by 1 point. It is a tough loss and will sting for a while, the boys understand this, we do not have time to pout about it. They are men and will handle it like men and will go back to training and start gearing toward regionals and state.
The last thing I would like to say is congratulations to Cooper Zickefoose. Cooper is last week’s WOW of the week. Cooper finished 3-1 at Carl Albert, and 3-0 at district duals. Cooper was the week 1 wrestler of the week to kick off the season and now has become our first wrestler to be named wrestler of the week for a second time. If he continues wrestling like he has been, who knows, it may be him again.