ALTOONA — After Friday night’s three rounds of wrestling at the Northwest Region AAA championships, the Clearfield Bisons have four championship semifinalists and one wrestler still alive in the wrestle backs.
Advancing to Saturday’s semifinals are Shane Peters, Christian Stone, Nolan Barger, and Cliff Hill. Still wrestling in hopes of qualifying for the state tournament in Hershey next week is Derek Danver, who is in the consolation quarterfinals.
Competition begins at noon on Saturday at the Altoona Area High School fieldhouse with the semifinals and second round of consolations.
The four Bisons that are in the semifinals were all Disrtict 9 champions last week and received opening round byes on Friday night.
At 103 pounds Bison senior Shane Peters (29-3) wasted no time in his match by pinning General McLane’s Joe Wheeling (32-9) in 1:49. Peters will face State College freshman Mike Kauffman (26-10) in the semifinals.
Sophomore Christian Stone (30-3) at 112 pounds bested Central Mountain’s Logan Bechdel (25-15) by a 13-6 score and will next face-off with District 8 champion Godwin Nyama (29-2) of Brashear. Stone beat Nyama, considered the City League’s best wrestler, in last year’s semifinal.
Fellow sophomore Nolan Barger (28-7) had the toughest quarterfinal match up of the Clearfield district champs as he battled Bellefonte’s Leo Wortman (30-9). Wortman picked up a late takedown to knot the score at four, but Barger was able to escape with six seconds remaining to earn the hard foughht 5-4 victory. Barger will try to advance to the finals when he goes against Indian Valley’s Mason Grove (22-10) in the semis. Barger beat Grove 3-0 in the recent Clearfield-Indian Valley dual meet.
Bison senior Cliff Hill (25-4) had his usual rough and tumble bout,but he eventually pinned Erie McDowell’s Mike Weissinger (19-9) at the 4:30 mark. Always the aggressor, Hill was in trouble and momentarily on his back in the second period; but shrugged that off and overpowered Weissinger early in the third period and ended it with a headlock. Hill will look to avenge a loss in his semifinal match. There he will face Lewistown’s Tyson Searer (34-1). Searer defeated Hill 9-3 in the Clearfield-Lewistown dual meet.
After giving up an early takedown to Bald Eagle Area’s Jacob Taylor (30-1) at 171, Derek Danver (30-8) battled the district 6 champion evenly as the match was 2-1 late in the third period. Danver tried valiantly the entire third period to turn Taylor, but it wasn’t to be and Taylor eventually got a late reversal to set the final at 4-1. Taylor had also beaten Danver in the season opening Top Hat tourney 4-2.
Danver had advanced to the quarterfinals with an opening round pin of General McLane’s Bryan Campbell (13-15). Danver then eliminated Bellefonte’s Jake Perryman (23-12) with a 9-0 major decision in the first round of consolations. Danver will wrestle Brashear’s Steven Granzeier (13-9) in the second round of consolations.
None of the other four Bison wrestlers were able to pick up a win on Friday and were eliminated. Ending their careers were four year lettermen Andrew Hill and Shane Harper.
District 6 leads the four districts with 23 semifinalists, while District 10 has 19, District 9 has 12, and District 8 has two. Corry and Erie Cathedral Prep lead with five individual semifinalists, while Clearfield, Westmont Hilltop, BEA, Erie McDowell, Central Mountain, and surprise Punxsutawney all have four left in the championship bracket. Central Mountain leads the tight team race.
See the complete results courtesy www.crossfacewrestling.net and Escape Sports:
http://gimp.escapesports.on-rev.com/LiveResults/PIAA/2011_NW_AAA.html