Southeast Junior Regionals

New Orleans, LA

            We just back, it's about 10:30 p.m. Sunday night. We left at 4:00 on Thursday afternoon for New Orleans with 5 vans and an SUV, we arrived at our hotel about 12:30 a.m. Friday morning we were guest of Coach Mark Strickland of New Orleans Jesuit H.S., where we had a 90 minute workout lead up by Coach C.T. Campbell and by Team Texas Head Coach Ryan Menard. After the workout the Team went back to the hotel to relax while coach Menard and myself went over the Rummell H.S. to register our 30 wrestlers. We got started at 4:00 p.m. with Greco where we had 8 qualifiers for Nationals and 10 placers. The biggest surprises were at 160 with Jake Jackson and Keegan Mueller, both wrestling up in weight class and neither having a great deal of experience with Greco, Jake lost 4-3 in the 1st place match to National Champion Rocky Cozart of Florida, while Keegan finished third.  Reggie Douglas also was impressive and eventually lost the 1st place match to teammate Tervel Dlagnev. It was a long day, we didn't get back to our rooms until almost midnight. Saturday morning we started at 10 a.m. Freestyle standouts were Matt Perez, Zach Tramel and Will Rowe all Champions. Will was on fire while mowing down all of his opponents in arguably the most stacked weight class, Will beat Illinois' Mark Friend in the 1st place match, we were hoping for a all Texas final, but Travis West fell a little short taking 4th.. In Freestyle we qualified 4 and placed 9.

            I would like to recognize and thank Coaches Menard, Campbell, Lujan for a job well done they represented and coached our wrestlers well, I would also like to thank Coach Lowery who couldn't come down with the Team, but drove down with his family to help out. I would like give special thanks to Richard Wakeland and Sandy Barton. Mr. Wakeland drove a van and did everything plus, you name it he did it or had it. Ms.Barton helped cart some of our guys around to and from, but most of all for taking Aaron Morales to the hospital and sitting there with him for about 6 hours, while the tournament was still in progress. Team Texas was represented by Official Cliff Buerke and pairing officials Ms. White and Thomas, thanks to you also. On  the negative end we had a few casualties, Aaron Morales we feared had a broken leg, but after x-rays shows a badly sprained ankle, Phillip Wakeland we fear might have separated shoulder, lets keep our fingers crossed as we should find out on Monday, Clayton Wise a broken nose. Many thanks to all who helped and to the parents that allowed us to spend 4 days with your young men, they all represented their Team respectively and with integrity.. I close by listing the names of those who participated.

                                                                                    Great Job!!!

                                                                                    Bryan West

Keegan Mueller

Will Rowe

Jake Jackson

Travis West

Rodney Hasty

Jack Kitchen

Brent Sarette

Josh Hines

Tervel Dlagnev

Phillip Wakeland

Ray Wilcox

Reggie Douglas

Matt Perez

Andrew Carby

Zach Tramel

Ray Chavez

Sean Clark

Aaron Morales

Wes Abel

Eric Grogan

Matt Myers

Lance Baird

Darrell Bell

Cody Cantrell

Lamar White

Clayton Wise

Jon Pyle

Robbie Sherrill

Drew Barton

Garrett Hempstead