GRANITE CITY – The number 400 can mean quite a bit of things.
In Jon Wagner’s case, it means the number of dual meets he’s won since taking over the Edwardsville wrestling program.
Wagner claimed win No. 400 as coach of the Tigers at Granite City’s Memorial Gym Annex Thursday night as EHS defeated the host Warriors 51-9 in a Southwestern Conference meet.
Wagner took the accomplishment in stride following the meet – even joking about it – but recognized what it meant to the program. “That’s good longevity,” Wagner said. “I’ve had a lot of great assistant coaches and a lot of them have been consistent over those 400 (wins)…I’ve had a lot of assistant coaches and a lot of great kids and I’ve had a lot of great support from the Edwardsville school district.
“I”m just a coach who shows longevity and I’ve had a good group of kids to coach.”
Getting that 400th win in a meet against the Warriors, a program that has had a long tradition of success themselves, meant something as well. “Edwardsville and Granite City’s been just a great rivalry,” Wagner said. “One of the first things that I said when I started coaching was ‘we’ve got to have a rivalry’, and we have a rivalry (with Granite).
“I think rivalries are important in sports, and as soon as we got going, we got this rivalry going with Granite City. It’s been a really special rivalry; we got the best of them this year, but you can tell those guys are well-coached and they came after us. They didn’t care that we were supposed to win or whatever, they came after us. I’m really proud of my kids too; they really crossed the line and were really serious about the match. They competed hard, so I thought tonight we really grinded it out on top, which is what we’re trying to get going into this next tournament (the Tigers will be taking part in).”
For his part, Warrior coach George Kirgan – who’s team has been struggling with injuries this year – said “we fell off; we’ve got a lot of things to do. To get to where we’d like to be, it starts at the grass roots. It starts with the young kids, building them up and getting them back there (to the wrestling room).
“I thought the kids who wrestled for us tonight did a great job; they wrestled with their heart. They fought their butts off. I know they hate this, and I hate it, but we don’t have a lot of depth, so when somebody gets hurt, there’s guys who maybe aren’t quite ready to be at this level and we have to throw them into the fire. I thought they wrestled really tough; I’m proud of them. You can’t ask for anything else.”
Rafael Roman started things off with a 9-4 win in the 145-pound bout over John Hirsch to put Edwardsville off to a an early 3-0 lead, which Baylor Montgomery extended to 6-0 when he defeated Brandon Bettag 7-2 at 152 pounds. The Warriors got their first win of the night when Kyle Thompson scored a 4-2 win over Chase Viehman at 160, but after that, it was all Tigers, starting when Connor Mikulaut squeezed out a 5-4 win over Chase Nelson at 170.
EHS got back-to-back pins at 182 and 195, Chris Prosser pinning Nick Zambito in 1:42 and James Watters scoring a a fall in 2:24 over John Buckingham. Cole Mikulaut then defeated Ryan Earney 6-2 at 220 and Bobby Burnside defeated Korinithan Nabors 5-3 at 285 to extend the Tiger lead to 27-3 going into the lightweight bouts.
Edwardsville then clinched the meet with three straight pins, starting with Noah Surtin’s 4:40 fall over Chris Santiago at 106, Dylan Wright’s 3:46 pin of Garrett Hooper at 113 and Jayleen Yancey’s 4:55 fall over Jordan Stermer to put the Tigers ahead 45-3 with three bouts left. Ben Schlueter won at 126, defeating Brendan Davis 7-0 and Devion Yancey scored an 8-2 win over Jared Skaggs at 132 for the final Edwardsville win of the evening; Granite City’s Wilyonde Bell pinned Joseph Griffin at 138 in 1:23 to close out the meet.
The Warriors will be taking part in this weekend’s Kansas City Stampede Tournament in Kansas City before hosting the 55th William “Red” Schmitt Holiday Tournament Dec. 28-29 at Memorial Gym and Memorial Gym Annex. The Tigers will be in the Dvorak Tournament in suburban Chicago Tuesday and Wednesday before taking the holidays off, returning to the mats at O’Fallon Jan. 6.
