Prep Wrestling: Picking Up The Hardware

The Harrisburg High School wrestling team finished third over the weekend at the Lawrenceville Invitational and Kyle Cavender came away with the tournament's Most Valuable Wrestler Award.

Harrisburg was third to first place finisher Olney, which scored 283 points and Anna-Jonesboro was second with 214.5 points.

The Bulldogs managed 209 points with the second-most first place finishes, coming away with four and had one second place finish, two third place finishes and two fourth place finishes.

Lawrenceville (162), Fairfield (147), Mt. Carmel (121.5), Owensboro, Ky. (109.5), Carmi-White County (87), Robinson (87) and Whitesville Trinity (52) rounded out the scoring.

In the 120-pound weight class, Landon Hicks scored a 13-7 decision over Owensboro's Noah Kirkman in the championship for the first of the Bulldogs' four first place finishes.

Kyle Cavender (126), Kody Cavender (132) Chase McDaniel (285) had the other first place finishes for Harrisburg.

Kyle Cavender scored a 14-1 major decision over Owensboro's Muhan Nard, while Kody Cavender had an 8-5 decision win over Olney's Nathan DeMeyer. McDaniel grabbed a first place finish for Harrisburg, beating Anna-Jonesboro's Nick Jimenez with a 2-1 decision.

Chandler Bowling (138) finished second to Olney's Ean Potorff in a 7-2 decision, while at 145 pounds, Jimmy Hicks took third, beating Owensboro's Cristian Lopez in a fall at 6:00. Also finishing third was Ryan Ragsdale at 182 pounds, beating Fairfield's Theron Stewart with a 17-10 decision.

Emmanuel Edwards (152) was fourth, falling to Trinity's Zachary Boarman with a fall at 1:22. Alex Johnson also finished fourth in the 220 division, losing to Anna-Jonesboro's Shad Turner at 4:28.

Michael Jaster had a sixth place finish for Harrisburg in the 160-pound weight class.

"We accomplished a third place team finish, which was great to see, but still felt that we came up short in doing the best we could have," head coach Greg Langley said. "I feel that we had more potential to score points in the team race than we showed, but came up short in finishing in the top two.

"The kids know we have more work to do to take that step forward. Don't get me wrong, we had guys do well, but we fell short in some of our weights that makes it tough in a team race. We will take the outcome of this tourney to build on as we go forward and try to improve."