Fini

Coach Dustin Burton of the North Desoto Wrestling Academy (NDWA) took 14 wrestlers to participate in the Justin High School Mid-Summer Mat Bash in Justin, Texas, a dual meet competition held over the weekend of July 27th and 28th.  The NDWA team went 2-4 in Friday's pool rounds and were placed in the Bronze Championship round-robin event on Saturday, in which they placed second.  Twenty-one teams from as far away as Kansas, Miami, Florida, St. Louis, Missouri and a conglomerate from Minnesota participated in the event.  The folkstyle event matches consisted of three rounds of 90 seconds each.

Best Trained, a regular attendee at the Jazz Town Duals, placed first in the Gold Division.  Choctaw Wrestling Club of Oklahoma won the Silver Division.  The Blue Valley Wrestling Club of Overland, Kansas, placed first in the Bronze Division, going 6-0 in their dual meets, one better than the NDWA, who went 5-1 on Saturday.

The North Desoto Wrestling Academy & Friends team at the Justin High School Mid-Summer Mat Bash.

Aside from North Desoto High School wrestlers were Basile's Gavin Christ, Loyola College Prep.'s Reece Ebarb and four wrestlers of unknown origins.

Christ, who was undefeated in the 2017-18 season, was undefeated at the event, posting a 12-0 record.  But the Basile senior was challenged harder than in the regular high school season, as three of his matches were won by a one-point margin.  Last season, Parkway's Trevor Tamburo provided Christ's closest match, losing to the Bearcats' three-time Division III state champion 4-2 in the finals of the Jacob McMillan Memorial.

North Desoto's second state champion, junior Richard Mack, III, went 7-4, with two of his losses by only two points and another by merely one.  Griffin senior Joshua Sarpy, who was undefeated in Louisiana (his only loss was in an Oklahoma tournament) until an early January injury cut his junior-year season short, was 8-3.  Sarpy's losses were via two 6-4 and one 3-2 scores.

As stated numerous times by the editor, simply going to a new event and facing new teams and faces provides substantial experience for wrestlers which cannot be measured by win-loss records.  Wrestling 10, 11 or 12 matches in an off-season event, whether sponsored by USA Wrestling's freestyle and Greco-Roman state and national championship events, and particularly folkstyle events such as this event and the Jazz Town Duals, provides experience, particularly in younger grapplers, which will show come their high school seasons.

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