Wrestling: Plainfield Central beats Minooka in Southwest Prairie
in the 120 pound final match Saturday afternoon, during the Southwest Prairie
Conference Championships at Minooka High School, January, 28, 2012.
| Ray Luna ~ For Sun-Times
In the first five years of the Southwest Prairie Conference tournament, Minooka finished first while Plainfield Central settled for second.
The same two squads once again battled it out for top honors at Saturday’s meet, but this time the Wildcats finally got the better of the Indians.
Central won five titles and had 11 place-winners in claiming the championship, 213-200.5 over host Minooka.
The Indians, who also saw their overall streak of nine straight conference titles snapped, had four champions and had 12 place-winners.
“Minooka has really set the bar high and made all of the programs in our conference work hard in order to get to that level,” Wildcats coach Jim Kappas said. “This is something that our guys really wanted.”
The Wildcats got titles from Nick Nasenbeny (120), Nathan Davis (126), Ryan Holzrichter (138), Jordan Ellingwood (182) and Greg Cameron (220), while Clayton Ledbetter (113), Wendell Daviston (170) and Mike Farr (285) were second.
Ellingwood wrapped up a 4-1 Wildcats advantage over the Indians in the finals when he beat Mitch Morris by technical fall in the title match for his third straight SPC crown.
“It’s exciting to be able to come into their house and to take the title away from them,” Ellingwood said. “We’ve prepared for this moment all year and have really pushed hard the past couple of weeks.”
Cameron repeated as an SPC champ after edging Oswego East’s Brandon Rivera 2-1 on a tiebreaker in a rematch of one of last year’s title matches.
Minooka got titles from three-time champions Bob Zabel (132) and Jake Residori (170). Corbett Oughton (145) repeated as an SPC champ, Jake Potts (195) also won a title, and Mike McNulty (126) and Mitch Morris (182) took second.
“I think I’m on a good track for where I’m going but there’s still room for improvement,” said Residori, who won the Most Valuable Wrestler award. “Even though we were missing some guys, I thought that we wrestled pretty well.”
Rounding out the team scores were Oswego (171), Oswego East (142), Romeoville (65), Plainfield South (64.5), Plainfield North (62.5) and Plainfield East (60).
South received a championship from Miguel Silva (106), while Jake Meeder (160) and Ryan Karas (195) had seconds.
North’s Nick DiNardo (152) repeated as an SPC champ after rallying from a 3-0 deficit for a 5-4 win over Oswego’s Max Larsen in the finals.
Romeoville got second places from Darshawn Hardy (120) and Caleb Ramos (132).
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