Fini

Place	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
Podium
Name	Brad Mahoney	Kade Moran	Roman Davis	Landry Barker	Russell Solomon	Kaden Keller
School	East Ascension	Baton Rouge	Mandeville	St. Paul	Holy Cross	Dutchtown
Seed	1	2	NS	NS	NS	6
Class	12	11	12	10	12	11
Final Record	49-0	17-5	5-1	13-6	4-2	12-7

Final records include Louisiana losses but all wins

Weight Class Synopsis

He has waited three years - Brad Mahoney should not feel slighted to wait another paragraph or several.

How about this senior-year wrestling season scenario?  You do not get any matches in November, December, January or in the vast majority of February.  When you get a match, it is at the state tournament.  You received a bye in Round-one, but your next match is versus the now 45-0 top-seed Brad Mahoney of East Ascension, who previously dispatched a sophomore in 23 seconds. 

Yet that does not have to be a bad thing.  Sure, you have yet to meet him on the mat.  Then again, he has never met you on the mat.  And you are not a sophomore, you are a senior.  A 23-second pin does not do anything to make Mahoney any warier of his next opponent - if anything he probably expects another easy win.  Now it is your chance - catch Mahoney unawares with something you have never done before, and that Mahoney will never expect.  Then you will face at worst an eighth seed in the quarterfinals.  Get past that and then a semifinals against someone that knows: A) you beat the kid the seeding committee deemed the favorite, and B) it was not a fluke as you won your next match as well.  Your semifinals opponent will be at a loss, and now the unseeded kid from Mandeville is in the finals.  You get to fill-in the biographical information form, take a nap, listen to your biography as you are introduced on the finals mats where you will show the state that Roman Davis of Mandeville High School should never be overlooked!  Then comes the Outstanding Wrestler award, the endorsements, the women, guest-hosting on JEOPARDY! and becoming a judge on The Masked Singer!

Step one was still Mahoney, though.  And it almost worked - for five minutes and 46 seconds.  The two started the third with Davis leading 3-1.  He was penalized a point for stalling after 30 seconds had elapsed in the third.  Six seconds later Mahoney escaped, tying the match at 3-3.  Points were tough to come by.  With 14 seconds remaining, though, Mahoney successfully used a duck-under to get behind Davis and take him down to the mat.  With Mahoney sitting behind him and in control, Davis tried what looked like a Granby roll which, as Mahoney held on, put Davis on his back with Mahoney now supine on his head.  Mahoney tightened-up and recorded a fall at 5:59 (as called in the TW video).

The dream scenario had come so close to becoming a reality.  But the dream was now gone, and now Davis faced the barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, of which the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume, of the never-ending consolation rounds.  As there were 24 wrestlers in the weight class, 16 remained in the championship bracket.  That meant everyone got a first-round bye on the other side.  Davis did not get any extra credit for keeping Mahoney on the mat longer than anyone else had since December 22nd. 

For the next four matches Davis faced a win-or-go-home scenario.  He chose win.  His first consolation match ended at 4:34 via a technical fall.  He followed that with an 18-second fall.  Next, he beat third-seeded senior Morgan Burke of Comeaux 5-2.  He then faced another non-seeded yet spunky senior opponent in Tucker Benoit of Acadiana, whom he beat 8-3.  Fifth-seeded Holy Cross senior Russell Solomon was next in the consolation finals.  Davis won that match 8-4 and suddenly, he was facing another non-seeded opponent, St. Paul sophomore Landry Barker, for third place.  Barker's path to the match for 3rd-place was as long as Davis', but he shortened his time on the mats significantly by pinning four of the five opponents to get there, including 6th seed Kaden Keller of Dutchtown.  He also teched 4th-seed Logan Pertuis of Live Oak 17-4.  He pushed Davis as well, but it was the Mandeville senior who prevailed 5-3.  From a devastatingly close six-minute loss to the number-one seed, Davis wrestled four more complete matches and an additional two matches in 4:52.  That is a well-earned third place.

Mahoney stopped hitting the "Snooze" button after his match with Davis.  He won his quarterfinal and semifinal matches in 1:33 apiece, and just required 10 extra seconds, 1:43, to become a state champion.

Davis' path to third is a good sidebar, but the headline story all season at 170 lbs. was Brad Mahoney.  Somehow his coach and father, Pat Mahoney, found a way to get the East Ascension wrestlers more matches than any other team during the COVID-ravaged season.  Four of them were listed on TW as having over 50 matches.  Mahoney is listed as 52-0.  The editor is a hard-ass though and does not count forfeits as wins, so in the LWN annuls he was 49-0.  He scored falls in 46 of his matches.  He won the Spartan Invitational, the Zachary Big Horse, the Trey Culotta Invitational and the Louisiana Classic prior to the state championship.  His closest match was his first on November 4th, an 8-2 win over Kade Moran of Baton Rouge.  The two met twice more and Mahoney did not let the matches go into the third period. 

For a schedule that included far too much Mahoney and, for a while, too much Fred Garrison, Jr. of St. Amant, the junior Moran had a great season.  After two losses to and one win over Garrison in November, Moran beat him in the finals of the Zachary Big Horse, then at a dual meet and lastly in the state quarterfinals.  After a semifinals loss to Mahoney in the Louisiana Classic, Moran came back to place third and finished his season as a Division I state runner-up with a record of 17-5.

Davis and Barker came out of nowhere to place third and fourth but seeding came back into play as Solomon defeated sixth-seeded Kaden Keller 4-3 to place fifth.  The third and fourth seeds, Morgan Burke of Comeaux and Logan Pertuis of Live Oak, lost in the quarterfinals and then in the fourth round of consolations to, you guessed it, Davis and Barker.

Early Championship Rounds

R1: (2) Kade Moran pinned Matthew Carter (FNT) in 0:53

R2: (4) Logan Pertuis (LO) pinned Thomas Domangue (CAT) in 2:00

R2: (7) Fred Garrison, Jr. defeated Landry Barker (StP) 6-3

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Quarterfinals

(1) Brad Mahoney (EA) pinned (8) Anton Brown (BM) in 1:33

Russell Solomon (HC) defeated (4) Logan Pertuis (LO) 6-2

(6) Kaiden Keller (DUT) defeated (3) Morgan Burke (COM) 12-2 MD

(2) Kade Moran (BR) pinned (7) Fred Garrison, Jr. (StA) in 4:41

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Semifinals

(1) Brad Mahoney (EA) pinned Russell Solomon (HC) in 1:33

(2) Kade Moran (BR) pinned (6) Kaiden Keller (DUT) in 2:45

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Championship Consolation Rounds

Roman Davis (MND) defeated Landry Barker (StP) 5-3 to place 3rd

Russell Solomon (DUT) defeated (6) Kaiden Keller (DUT) 4-3 to place 5th

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Finals

Top-seeded Brad Mahoney of East Ascension remained undefeated and may have capped off the best record in the COVID-ridden 2020-21 season by pinning second-seeded Kade Moran of Baton Rouge in 1:43   This was the third time Mahoney and Moran met each other on the mats.  In a November dual meet, the first match of the season for both wrestlers, Mahoney prevailed 8-2.  They next met in the Louisiana Classic semifinals, which Mahoney won via a fall in 3:31.  This time Mahoney only needed 1:43, but it should be noted that Moran, only a junior, scored the first takedown after 17 seconds had elapsed.

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