Kennett wrestling sweeps tri-meet with mixed results

A deeply contested meet between Kennett and Sikeston on Tuesday in Notre Dame High School came down to the heavyweight bout.

Fortunately for the Indians, head coach Jacob Whittle’s final card to play was also his best wrestler.

“Kevin Thompson saved the day,” Whittle said. “I asked him to go out there and pin the kid and he did just that.”

Thompson pinned Kobe Bryant in 3:45 to secure the duel meet for the Indians 42-39. The sophomore has improved since placing fourth in the 3rd Annual Central Rebels Invitational on Jan. 7 in Park Hills.

“Kevin started off hot. He's only lost a handful of matches,” Whittle said. “I think he lost five matches on the year and he's only lost to quality wrestlers so far, really high quality wrestlers. So I'm proud of the way he's been working all year. He's almost a guaranteed lock to go out there and pin anybody else that’s out there against him.”

Thompson took second place in the heavyweight division of the Tiger Classic this past December and was the highest finisher among the Indians in that tournament. The Indians will return to that location on Friday for the SEMO Conference Tournament, hoping for better overall results.

“I think individually it's looking up,” Whittle said. “The Cape Tiger Classic didn't go too well for us as a team but I feel like come conference this weekend, districts, I feel like our individual wrestlers that are excelling are getting better.”

Kennett won its duel meet with Notre Dame but only because of forfeits. The Bulldogs went in with only four available wrestlers and won every match.

“It's a bit of a weird thing because my 132-pounder [Jaxon Strider] got hurt vs. Sikeston, so I wrestled my other one and it was still a pretty close match,” Whittle said. “My varsity 157-pounder [Tyler Preston] has beaten [Sam Criddle] two out of the four times they've wrestled so now they're .500. I wrestled my JV 175 [Justin Brooks] against against their [Ethan Jackson] because my varsity 175 has beat him once this year and already has that win going into the conference meet, so I was trying to say make sure he's fresh. We don't have another meet this week, just got practice until Friday, and I'd like to keep the 175 fresh for that. So, on the scoreboard and I mean, the results is gonna look kind of weird but I'm still pretty happy with it.”

Whittle said he has seen some of his wrestlers make a significant improvement from the last time they wrestled in a Cape Central venue.

“I think Cole Biggs was wrestling at 152 last year and this year he's wrestled up to 165. He's improved significantly,” Whittle said. “He's got tall, lanky, double jointed shoulders. Justin Brooks moved up a weight class this year. Both are pretty solid wrestlers. I'm impressed with the jumps that they made. And we got some senior leadership I’m really proud of. I've got 11 seniors on the team, a couple of them pretty vocal, couple of them aren’t so vocal but having that big senior presence has really helped as well.”