My son's Wrestling season...

[bushido_man96]

Thank you @sensei8.  With the high school season over, he's turned to the Kid's Wrestling season.  This Saturday he'll be competing in the District 4 Championships, and the top 4 go onto the State tournament in Topeka.  The weight classes are slightly different; there's a 235 class and a 265 class, then 285.  He's going to be wrestling in the 265 class, which is nice, because he doesn't have to worry about cutting a bunch of weight, and he'll only be giving up at most 20 lbs to an opponent, as opposed to up to 45 lbs.  I'll be updating this weekend.

[sensei8]

Keeping on the mat even after the season ends is quite admirable. Good luck, Kenneth!! Looking forward to your updates.

[bushido_man96]

District Championships results from this weekend: Kenneth went 2-0 and placed first.  There was only one other kid in the division this year, and they wrestled a best 2-out-of-3.  Kenneth handled business in the first match, getting into the second period and winning with a pin.  In the second match, the other kid came at him really hard; it appeared to be an attempt to try to catch him off-guard and get a desperation headlock to get a win.  Kenneth responded well, kept good position, and took the kid down and pinned him in the first period this time.

This is also his first time winning the district championships.  This is great, because he'll go to State as a number one seed, and face the 4 seed from one of the other districts.  I've also heard via the coach that there are only 12 in the state bracket for his age/weight class.  Stay tuned for next week!

[sensei8]

Way to go Kenneth!! Congratulations!!

[bushido_man96]

Ok, State Championship tournament has come and gone, and I'm going to give this one a thorough rundown.  We got in on the afternoon of 3/14, and Kenneth weighed in at 242 lbs.

Day 1, 3/15/2025

Match 1:  Unfortunately, this match was a scratch.  Not sure what was up with the kid, but the new was the kid he was supposed to wrestle was 0-4 or 0-5.  Still, would have rather wrestled than not.

A note here on the bracket.  The way it plays out, is depending on which district you get matched up with (they rotate them each year), the 1 seed gets a 4 seed from the other district.  The 2 seed gets the 3 seed, etc.  Well, the way it worked out, there was no 3 seed from the opposing district, so the kid Kenneth actually beat twice to get the 1 seed had a natural bye in the tournament, and Kenneth did not.  I think that is something that needs to be addressed, as the higher seed should get rewarded with the bye if it's there.  But, be that as it may, I'm certain Kenneth would have taken care of business if he would have had a first match.  In a way, he ended up with a bye anyway.

Match 2:  At the start of the match, Kenneth was tying up well.  His opponent did a lateral drop, but Kenneth had good pressure and hip placement to sprawl out and come back up with the opponent.  So they were back to neutral and fighting for position.  His opponent started a slide-by and ended up giving Kenneth a headlock.  With that, Kenneth took him over and worked to pin.  The opponent was rolling around and trying to roll Kenneth through, and he ended up rolling back into Kenneth, which allowed Kenneth to sink it in even deeper.  He tightened it up and got the pin, nearly choking the kid out in the process.  2-0 on the day.

Match 3:  Semifinals!  No matter what happened now, making it to the semifinals meant the lowest he could place was 6th, securing his first ever podium finish at state.  Kenneth opened up with two underhooks and a throw for 3 points.  The opponent rolled through and Kenneth "cut him" (let him up).  They hand fought and pummeled, and the opponent went for a headlock, and Kenneth got a body lock with an underhook and threw him again, scoring another 3 points and also getting 4 back points for a near-fall.  They ended up out of bounds and got reset, and Kenneth kept him broke down with a tight-waist/ankle and rode out period 1, up 12-1.  To start the second period, the opponent chose top, and Kenneth did a "quad-pod" stand-up, and got caught in a cow-catcher.  He sprawled out, got back to the quad-pod, posted his arms out and scored an escape.  Kenneth got to the underhook body lock again and threw again for 3 more points, going up 16-1.  Kenneth held him down after the takedown and pinned him for the major decision.  3-0, and into the finals!  Now the lowest he could place was 3rd, and I'll elaborate on that in just little bit.

Day 2, 3/16/2025

Match 4:  This was going to be a tough match.  The opponent was 4th place last year in this same tournament.  The kid was very tall and was a very solid wrestler.  When they started off, Kenneth was getting his inside ties and was doing ok pummeling for position.  The opponent took shot a single-leg and Kenneth sprawled out, and they got up.  The opponent came in for a headlock and Kenneth got his body lock again.  From there, neither could get the position they wanted, so they backed out to collar ties.  The opponent went for a trip but they had worked over to the edge of the mat and were called out of bounds and set back to neutral.  Now here, it seems like Kenneth got pensive about tying back up.  This was bad, because Kenneth was on his heels moving back slightly, and I started yelling at him to make some connections so he could work again.  Too late.  The opponent shot a blast double that finished out of bounds.  The reset with Kenneth on bottom position, and from there Kenneth got broke down with a head lever and got turned for a pin.  3-1 for the weekend, and one would think that since this is the finals, Kenneth finished 2nd place.  But not so fast....

Starting last year or the year before, KS Kids Wrestling started initiating the "true second place" rule.  The way this works is that the wrestler that takes 3rd place can challenge the 2nd place finisher for "true second" if the 3rd place wrestler had not been beaten by the 2nd place finisher earlier in the bracket.  We got to watch the 3rd/4th place match as they were up before his match.  One of the wrestlers was the kid Kenneth beat in the semifinals, and I was hoping that kid would win, then there'd be no challenge.  But the other wrestler won, and he was hanging around watching Kenneth's finals match.  The 3rd/4th place match was a sloppy one, though.  The two came in high on each other, basically in a headlock battle to see who would fall down first.  They both had height and weight on Kenneth, but I really wasn't too concerned about either of them.  The kid watching Kenneth's match yelled out in excitement at his chance to challenge for true 2nd when Kenneth lost.  What I was really worried about was Kenneth's head-space after just losing a title match, and getting him mentally reset to take on one last opponent.  So, I gave him a pep talk that I can't repeat here, but the abridged version of it was that he wasn't going to let this kid come take his runner-up finish away, was he?  He agreed, and waited about 10 minutes for a few other true 2nd matches to finish up before we began.

Match 5:  This was literally the last match of the day; tape was getting pulled up and mats were getting rolled up all around us.  So they go out, shake hands, and it's on.  Kenneth gets inside ties, and the taller opponent tried the headlock like he did in the 3rd/4th place match.  Kenneth explained to me that the opponent had the headlock on the wrong side, on his own (the opponent's) side, and he couldn't throw him.  Kenneth had a true headlock.  They ended up backing out of the headlock positions and pummeled for position.  Kenneth got two underhooks and a body lock to a trip for a takedown and 3 points, and the opponent did a knee-slide out of bounds.  They reset with Kenneth in top position, and Kenneth broke him down with an ankle ride.  Kenneth defended a "big man roll" and broke him down again.  He got a chicken wing and turned his opponent for 2 back points, and his opponent crawled out of bounds again and got called for stalling.  That ended the first period with Kenneth holding a 5-0 lead.  To start the 2nd period, Kenneth chose neutral, and he pummeled to an underhook, and the kid went for Kenneth's head, and Kenneth got the body lock with an arm in, and threw him nicely, landed on top with basically a barbed wire pinning combination set in, and Kenneth settled in, T-ed out, and got the pin!  While getting pinned, the opponent got his hand pulled away from Kenneth's face by the ref; the opponent was trying to push Kenneth's head away, and nearly gouged his eye in the process.  Either way, it wasn't enough to stop the pin from happening, and Kenneth secured his 2nd place finish!  4-1 record for the weekend!

I was so happy for Kenneth, with this being his first podium finish, after 7 years of wrestling.  It had been a long time since that 6U 4th place finish.  Kenneth was so happy, too, and we got to share that moment together, and I'll always remember it.  And he's got one up on big brother Kendall; Kendall's best state finish was 3rd.

What I really think kicked things off for Kenneth this year in wrestling was the success he experienced at the Heartland Duals we went to last year.  I think it set him up with some understanding of how to compete and that he knew he could compete.  This year he got past the point of worrying about everyone being heavier and taller than him; he knew in high school wrestling he'd have to be a giant slayer this year, and he carried that attitude into the Kids season.  It has all paid off.  I'm looking forward to three more years of wrestling.  Come what may, we got to have this year, and this year was great.

[DarthPenguin]

Yeah it sounds like he is doing really really well. Also sounds like some solid building blocks for next year too

[bushido_man96]

14 hours ago, DarthPenguin said:

Yeah it sounds like he is doing really really well. Also sounds like some solid building blocks for next year too

Thanks DP.  I think he's grown a lot in confidence, and am really looking forward to the next three years.

[bushido_man96]

I don't know if anyone kept up on the NCAA Wrestling finals, but Wyatt Hendrickson beat Gabel Steveson for the HWY title.  There was a wrestling camp announced today that Kenneth got signed up for in June, and Wyatt Hendrickson is going to be the camp clinician.  It was a great deal, and he's super excited to go.

[DarthPenguin]

Yeah i saw that, was surprised to see Steveson back in the NCAA tbh (i don't follow NCAA wrestling generally but i know he had flamed out at WWE and also didn't make the Bills roster). I had expected he would have taken up MMA tbh and seen what damage he could do in the UFC. I thought he would have ended up a better version of Lesnar at the very worst (more decorated wrestler plus more time to learn the skills) 

[bushido_man96]

15 hours ago, DarthPenguin said:

Yeah i saw that, was surprised to see Steveson back in the NCAA tbh (i don't follow NCAA wrestling generally but i know he had flamed out at WWE and also didn't make the Bills roster). I had expected he would have taken up MMA tbh and seen what damage he could do in the UFC. I thought he would have ended up a better version of Lesnar at the very worst (more decorated wrestler plus more time to learn the skills) 

This may still happen.  The announcers were talking about it off and on during the broadcast.  He's planning another Olympic run, but after that, I can see him getting into MMA.