Junior Jesse Westerhouse on top.

BY CHANDLER SHIELDS

Sparkman High School’s Varsity Wrestling team brought its A-game this past Saturday at The Viking Duels tournament.

Hosted by Walker High School, three other varsity teams were invited, including Pell City, Clay-Chalkville and Sparkman.  The tournament only lasted from 8 a.m. to noon which made it a pleasurable two hour ride home with the title of success in mind.

“Sometimes the rides home are terrible because we feel like we didn’t try as hard as we should have. But this tournament we definitely made our mark,” Westerhouse said.

Junior Micah McGlathery, weight class 145 pounds, won three out of three matches by applying the same technique: leg riding and shot defense. He took down all of his competitors with ease and without botches, which is expected from him for being one of the captains.

The other captain, junior Jesse Westerhouse, weight class 138 pounds, also came to victory with his double leg takedown technique on one opponent, and he used a reverse cradle and ran a half to bump the other victim.

“My favorite part of wrestling is taking people down. It’s what it’s all about,” smirked Westerhouse.

One-hundred-and-twenty pound freshman Brad Wolfe missed weight and had to wrestle up a weight class. By doing this, he was forced to give up strength. He was getting beat five to one in the second period. Then he got an escape and wrestled his opponent with a double leg and put him on his back, resulting in a pin.

Seventh-grader Cameron Harbin “tecked” his opponent, which means he beat the opponent with a 15 or more point lead. In most wrestlers’ eyes, this is the most embarrassing way to lose, especially when the victorious opponent resides in seventh grade while the loser is in tenth.

Sparkman was not only victorious individually, but as a team they performed strongly. Seven out of the eight wrestlers on varsity were titled all-tournament.

“The team wrestled great as a whole, although we had to give up six forfeits, because we didn’t have enough wrestlers to fill those weight classes. But the matches we wrestled we did great in,” McGlathery said.