Brant Beck, Weiand get falls in season-opening dual win

Deming beats Duffy in showdown at 215; Shotts wins debut at 157

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Brant Beck

NORTH MANCHESTER — Brant Beck (165) and Colin Weiand (190) recorded falls, and Kale Shotts (157) and Alex Deming (215) also recorded victories on the mat as the Rochester wrestling team beat host Manchester 49-21 Friday.

Beck, Weiand and Deming are all moving up in weight class. Shotts is a freshman who was making his varsity debut.

Rochester’s other 30 points came on forfeit wins from Grant Holloway (106), Layne Horn (126), Ayden Keller (132), D.J. Basham (138) and Brady Beck (HWT). Holloway and Keller are freshmen whose varsity debuts will have to wait. Horn was a state qualifier at 106 last year who is moving up three weight classes, and Brady Beck has put on

Colin Weiand

approximately 40 pounds and moved up from 220.

Basham was a regional qualifier last year.

Reed Perry (113), Maison Ramsey (144) and Ethan Amezquita (157) lost by fall, and Aiden Myers (175) lost by decision.

Wyatt Davis and Declan Gard, who are projected to wrestle at 144 and 175, respectively, missed the dual due to illness.

There was a double forfeit at 120.

The match with the two most accomplished wrestlers was at 215, where Deming defeated Manchester’s Preston Duffy 15-7. Duffy was a semistate qualifier last year at 195 while Deming finished seventh at state at 195.

Duffy never came close to a takedown – his points came on a penalty and six escapes.

“I think Alex was frustrated,” Rochester coach Clint Gard said. “I think he wanted to beat him worse comparing it to last year, and like I told him, I thought he wrestled pretty well. It looked a little stale. It looked like he hadn’t wrestled in a long time, and he hadn’t. Alex just hadn’t been in a competitive match since state healing from that shoulder stuff. It’s been a long time since he’s had a competitive match, and you’ve just got to get your timing back and get your conditioning back. He’ll be fine. We’ve got to add some things and keep working on what he’s really good at and getting his footwork a little bit better, but he’ll be alright.”

Shotts had perhaps the most down-to-the-wire match, pulling out a 9-7 win over Jose Cortes thanks to a reversal with 26 seconds left in the second period and another with 1:49 left in the match that turned a 5-4 deficit into an 8-5 lead.

Cortes, who is two years older than Shotts, then got a reversal on Shotts, but Shotts received a penalty point and closed out the match.

Coach Gard noted that this was Shotts’ first ever six-minute match in front of a crowd. Coach Gard said Shotts was nervous but said this match was a “learning curve” for him.

“He’s got to believe in his conditioning a little bit more,” coach Gard said. “That’s the mindset thing. He gets tired and not reverting back to what he did as a middle-schooler or what he could away with against middle school kids. He’s got to continue to fight through positions. A lot of that is just your conditioning and your mental toughness. He was in two or three positions there where he’s in a habit of laying on his belly. And a lot of our guys were. We’ve got to stay off our bellies. You’re never safe on your stomach.”

Brant Beck recorded five takedowns in less than 40 seconds against Peyton Neal before finally turning him on his back and ending his night in 44 seconds.

Weiand leveraged his weight onto the left shoulder of Jeffery Ruckman and pinned him in 1:44.

“Colin can be as good as Colin wants to be,” coach Gard said. “He’s a strong kid, and he knows wrestling. But he’s got to get his conditioning, and he’s got to get his weight under control. I think Colin will have a great season for us. We’ve got to get some of those things under control that have an effect on a lot of other things.”

Rochester returns all four wrestlers who made state from last year but also graduated semistate qualifiers Ethan Holloway, Aaron Swango, Greyson Gard, Gavin McKee and the late Carlos Orduño.

Orduño died in a single-vehicle accident Nov. 10, and his viewing at the Good Family Funeral Home was earlier Friday.

“We graduated a lot, but I feel like in some ways the weight changes helped us a little bit, in some ways it didn’t,” Brady Beck said when asked about the potential of this year’s team. “But the guys we’ve got coming up and taking those spots are very young with a lot of potential and great measures for improvement. I’m excited to see what they can do.”