Things didn’t go quite as planned for the Tahoma and Kentlake wrestling teams on Saturday during the Class 4A Region I tournament at Snohomish High.
Kentwood, on the other hand, came out feeling pretty good about itself.
Add it up, and the results from what was widely regarded as the toughest regional tournament in the state were to be somewhat expected. Tahoma and Kentwood advanced six wrestlers apiece to Friday and Saturday’s state tournament while Kentlake pushed through two.
But Tahoma coach Chris Feist couldn’t help but feel a bit out of sorts Saturday night on his way home from Snohomish. The big reason for that was the loss of junior standout Derrek Eager, who broke his leg in the first round of the tournament.
“It was a really bad injury,” Feist lamented. “Our team was really concerned about him and it funked us out a little bit.”
Lake Stevens cruised to the team title with an impressive 260.5 points followed by Snohomish with 162. Second-ranked Tahoma took fourth with 134 points followed by Kentwood, 110. Kentlake took seventh with 67 points. The top five wrestlers in each weight class earned berths to the state tournament.
Eager’s injury aside, Tahoma’s Nick Bayer, 171, and Konner Knudtsen, 215, still went on to deliver golden performances. However, Tahoma’s Jordan Higa, 130, who qualified for state last year, didn’t make the cut, taking sixth place in one of the tournament’s deepest brackets.
“A couple things didn’t fall our way,” Feist said. “We expected 7 or 8 and we got six. The six we got through are going to score a lot for us at state.”
Though Higa didn’t quite make the cut, Mike Milat, who had been wrestling at 135 on the junior varsity most of the season, stepped it up a notch with a fourth-place finish.
“Milat wrestled out of his mind,” Feist said.
And while Milat provided one of the tournament’s nicest surprises, Kentwood’s Cody Quinn and Ruben Navejas simply took care of business.
Quinn, 140 pounds, and Navejas, 103, each snagged bracket titles.
It’s Quinn’s third-straight regional title. But the work is far from over. If anything, it has just begun, Quinn noted.
“I just want to bust my butt this week,” said Quinn, who enters the state with a 34-4 overall record. “The harder I work, the more it will pay off.”
Quinn will try and become Kentwood’s first-ever four-time state placer. He took fourth last year, a slot that simply doesn’t fit his ultra-competitive personality.
“I want (a state title) big time,” he said. “Just looking back to last year, fourth … I am not a fourth-place wrestler, that’s not me. Leaving with a state title is something I really, really want. It’s something I’ve been thinking about since before last year.”
Quinn won Saturday’s crown in convincing fashion, collecting two pins before working a 19-4 technical fall of Snohomish’s Luke Perry in the finals.
Though not as dominant, Navejas was equally as impressive, earning three-straight victories, culminating in a 4-1 decision over Lake Stevens’ Ryan Rodrigo for the crown.
Meanwhile, Kentlake’s Austin Carrillo, 145, was the lone Falcon to advance to the finals. Carrillo lost to Lake Stevens’ Jacob Anderson 8-6 in the championship match. Greg Eley, fourth at 160, was the only other Falcon to earn a state berth.
“We’re were hoping to get more than we did (to state),” said Kentlake coach Pete Reardon. “We wrestled well, but we could have gotten two or three more guys through. We didn’t have our best weekend of wrestling.”
