Salina, Kan.—
Salina South High School and Salina Central High School met on the wrestling mats to open the 2012-2013 wrestling season Thursday night.The mats said "SALINA CENTRAL" on them and had Mustang logos because Salina Central served as host to the annual event Thursday night.
But the Cougar wrestling team looked at the mats and the unfamiliar surroundings and made themselves feel right at home as they won nine of the 12 matches wrestled, five of them via pins en route to a 42-23 season-opening victory.
"We came out and won a pretty competitive dual," Salina South head coach Garry Seibel said. "It was our first one our, I was pretty pleased with our effort for the most part. But we didn’t win every match so I’m not that happy."
The dual opened with a tight match between Salina South’s Randall Bates and Salina Central’s Chance Sorell. Bates scored the match's first take down in the opening period, but got whistled for two illegal holds and the match stood knotted 2-2 after the first period.
Sorell chose bottom to begin the second period, but Bates couldn’t turn him and Sorell couldn’t escape so the match went knotted 2-2 into the final period.
Bates chose bottom to begin the final period and quickly scored an escape for a 3-2 lead with 1:46 remaining in the match and took Sorell down again and rode him out the final minute for a 5-2 win which gave Salina South the early 3-0 team lead.
"I was pleased with some of the guys, like Randall Bates, who had their first varsity match," Seibel said. "I thought he competed awfully hard and won a close match. I was just really pleased with the way we competed."
Bates’ victory was just the beginning of what turned into early domination by the Cougars as they won the first six matches of the dual, the final four of those six being pins for a quick 30-0 lead.
Salina Central, however, did't go away too easily as the Mustangs answered that early Salina South run with a pin of their own from Dalton Peters at the 145-pound division.
The two teams closed out the dual by trading wins at weights. The Cougars, however, scored enough bonus points and built up enough of an early lead to withstand the Mustangs and win the season-opener 42-23.
"This was our first one, it is going to be a long season," Seibel said. "It is a good start. But we will just see how it goes from here. This is the first real live action and we will see how things turn out."
