SMALL LABETTE HITS THE BIG TIME IN JUNIOR COLLEGE
A new wrestling hotbed may have emerged in the United States. The name of the town is Parsons and serves as the home to Labette Community College, the newly crowned junior college national champions. For a solid week the Kansas town, with a population of just over 10,000, gave head coach Joe Renfro and his championship squad a grand victory celebration.
The party started on Saturday, Feb. 28, when the Cardinals won the school’s first-ever national title in wrestling and the first title in any sport sin
ce 1960. When Renfro and his boys arrived home from their victory early Sunday morning it was complete pandemonium. “When we got into town we stopped at a convenience store and they had a fire truck waiting for us to escort us back to the gym,” said Renfro. “People were honking and waving and when we arrived at the college there were about 300 people waiting for us. They introduced all the All-Americans and had a banquet for us. It was incredible.”
But that was only the start of things to come. On Wednesday, they had a parade on Main Street (which is also U.S. highway 400) with a pep assembly shortly after. Later that night, the team was introduced in front of 1,500 fans at the local high school basketball game and received a standing ovation. Finally on Thursday, they shut down the entire school and dedicated it as Labette Community College wrestling day.
After the first day of competition it was uncertain whether Labette would win the title. North Idaho held a 3.5-point lead going into Saturday’s All-American round with each team having six wrestlers still competing. But after the consolation round was complete, Labette gained a five-point lead and had three finalists to North Idaho’s one.
Sophomore and defending 125-pound national champion Earl Jones could put the team race out of reach if he defeated Mark Frey of Neosho in the 133-pound championship match. As he’s done all year, the calm and collected Jones came up big for his team with a 9-0 win, making him the school’s first two-time national champion. He was also awarded the tournament’s outstanding wrestler award later in the evening.
Although the team victory was secure with a 108-99 margin, Jones’ win would be the last victory by either of the top two schools in the finals. Justin Pearch of North Idaho lost a close 4-3 decision to Zach Flake of Lassen while Adam Ingram and Jared Shelton of Labette lost their championship matches in heartbreaking fashion.
At 157 pounds, Chase Walker of Northwest Wyoming secured a takedown in overtime to post a 7-5 victory over Ingram. Later in the evening, Yura Malamura of Highline scored a takedown on Shelton with 20 seconds left in the match to win at 197 pounds.
“We worked very hard to win this title,” said Renfro. “You have to realize that seven out of the ten in guys in our line-up were not state champions. Those are guys who have gotten second or third to not even placing in high school. We had a couple bad breaks with kids not sticking it out and we ended up making due with what we had. Don’t get me wrong, these guys have talent but we definitely had to work real hard and that was our motto this year as far as getting out there and getting after it.”
The division III (non-scholarship) team race was also hotly contested with two and a half points separating the top three teams. While the division III schools compete at the same tournament and are calculated into the overall team standings, the non-scholarship schools have their own team standing and crown their own team champion.
The top three teams in division III also had a major impact on the overall standings, placing third through fifth. This year’s non-scholarship crown went to Ridgewater Community College, an unlikely victor considering they came into the tournament ranked fourth.
“I told them going into that if we wrestled well and had a little bit of luck we had a chance to win it,” said Ridgewater head coach Jesse Nelson. “So winning definitely was in the back of our minds. I’m more pleased that we placed third overall. That was a big accomplishment for us. It’s not that I don’t think it’s big to win a division III title but placing third is a big deal for a small non-scholarship school with an enrollment of 2000.”
Upon examining the results, it appears strange that Ridgewater won. The Warriors only had four All-Americans and no finalists while second place Harper had six All-Americans and third place Itasca had five. Ridgewater’s secret ingredient turned out to be bonus points scored in several their consolation matches.
“Our guys are pinners and we had a lot of pins with the guys that didn’t make it to All-American status,” said Nelson. “They might go 2-2 but they would be pins and that scored us a lot of points. Our 157 pounder who came back and got third scored a pin and three major decisions so we were scoring bonus points almost every time. We qualified nine guys and we scored with eight so it was a total team effort.”
Placing one point behind Ridgewater was Harper, a team that did have one finalist among their six All-Americans. Freshman heavyweight Marino Eatman placed second after losing 1-0 to Dustin Rogers of Southwestern Oregon. But it was Eatman who posted the biggest upset of the tournament when he defeated top-ranked and heavily favored Jon Andriac of Nassau 6-1 in the semifinals.
Other individual champions of note were returning finalists Seth Wright of Northwest Wyoming and Eric Luedke of Colby. For Wright, it was a chance to vindicate his 11-7 loss to Earl Jones in last year’s finals. This year, the Trapper star left nothing to chance, earning a first period pin and the 125 pound championship.
Eric Luedke of Colby represented the only other returning champion at the tournament. Having won last year at 157 pounds, Luedke moved up to the 165 pound slot, winning his second national title with a 7-4 victory over James Varner of Pima.
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