Six North Beach wrestlers to State

North Beach High wrestlers Jennifer Law (repeating) and Dominic Deibel were champions yesterday, in the Regional tournament at Tacoma. They move on to next weekend’s State championship, as do Anthony Tignino, Robert Buck and the Reed brothers, Sawyer and Tyler. From Maynard Reed, the coach (and Sawyer and Tyler’s father):

“North Beach will be taking six wrestlers to state again this year. In the boy’s Regional tournament at Tacoma Baptist, the Hyaks placed five boys in the top four of their respective weight class. At 119 pounds, Dominic Deibel annihilated the competition and captured his first Regional crown. At 125 Anthony Tignino defeated Adna’s Ryan McLain for third place and the opportunity to wrestle next week at state; a fourth place finish garnering the alternate’s spot. Tignino lost to McLain in last week’s sub-regional championship match but controlled him the entire match this week. Tignino wrestled at state last year at 112 pounds. Robert Buck, with the Hyak’s best overall performance for the day, came back and claimed third at 171. Buck lost his first match to Tacoma Baptist’s Luke Peters, but dominated and pinned his next two opponents to wrestle Peters again in the third/fourth match. This time it was Buck who completely controlled the match and won 14-0 for his first ever state berth. At 189 Tyler Reed is the Hyak’s only alternate. After avenging a loss in last week’s sub-regional tournament to Adna’s JR Siperly to get the chance to wrestle for third, Reed wrestled and fell short to Ocosta’s much improved William Helman. Tyler’s older brother, Sawyer, defeated Concrete’s Scott Rice to become the Hyak’s only other finalist. Sawyer wrestled Darrington’s Moe Hyde, the #1 ranked B heavyweight, in the finals. Sawyer gave Hyde all he could handle, surprising him quite a few times and putting him on his back a couple of times, but finished second for the day.

“Everyone finished pretty much where we coaches expected. I had hoped that Robert Buck would win his first match and our other 171, Robby Patton, might have a chance against Luke Peters and possibly end up against Robert for third/fourth. Unfortunately, they had to wrestle each other for their second match, and Robby was knocked out of the tournament early. I also hoped that Kevin Braden would get a shot at a medal. Due to a broken collar bone suffered in football, Kevin was unable to wrestle until the last couple of weeks of the season. He made great strides in the few weeks he’d been practicing, and he had two good matches on Saturday, but they just didn’t wind up like we wanted. We coaches were very pleased with our younger wrestler’s (Kaleb Towery, Joey Franklin, Alex Cadle) performance as well. We’ve told them all week that they had to wrestle their best this weekend, and they did. We expect some great things out of them next year. We are very proud of everyone’s performance Saturday.”

In the girl’s Regional tournament, Jennifer Law continues to impress by capturing her second consectutive Regionals title to go along with her three sub-regional titles. Jennifer will take her third trip to state in three years with the goal of adding a state championship to her already impressive resume. Last year, Jennifer placed 5^th at state. Jennifer has only lost three matches this year against girl opponents. Her first loss of the season came against last year’s 160 pound state champion. Her other two losses were against Evergreen’s Stephanie Simon, who she pinned this Saturday to capture the Regional crown.

“We coaches are very proud and impressed with Jennifer. The only girl on the team, it could be said she has a disadvantage in the practice room, but she routinely competes (and defeats) the guys she wrestles. She has been very focused all year. Getting Jennifer to some of the girls tournaments have been adventures in themselves, but I owe a lot of thanks to volunteer coaches Alex Thurston and Nick Poplin for being there to help her, and a big thank you goes to Jennifer’s mom, Julie Law, who has helped get her to tournaments and provided great video. We look forward to next week being in one building so that the whole team gets to see her wrestle and help her out.”