Wolves Wrestlers Head to State
STATE BOUND. Rance Digby (left) and Ethan May finished fourth in their respective weight classes qualifying both for the State Wrestling Tournament Feb. 24-25 in Oklahoma City at the Fair Grounds.
By Jeff Mapes
The Davis Wolves wrestling team will send two wrestlers next week to the State Tournament in Oklahoma City. Ethan May and Rance Digby placed fourth at the Regional Tournament Feb. 17-18 in Perry which earned them a spot at State.
“I think it’s awesome,” Davis head coach Ryan Bates said of his two grapplers qualifying. “Both of them wrestled really well this weekend. Rance Digby wrestled the best I’ve ever seen him wrestle. They wrestled some really high-level kids.”
The Wolves took 10 wrestlers to Regionals and placed 11th out of 30 teams with 83 points.
“As a whole, we won the majority of the matches we were supposed to win,” Bates said. “I can only think of two matches where we should have won that we didn’t. We did win some where on paper we weren’t supposed to win.”
“I think as a whole, we wrestled really well,” Bates continued.
May, now 30-9 at 144 pounds, went 4-2 at the meet and scored 19 team points. The junior pinned Tyndale Mcintosh of Community Christian in the second round and scored a major decision over Ryan Crawford of Plainview.
May also won a 4-3 decision over Erik Roy of Comanche. However, he lost twice to Blackwell’s Grant Rowe, including a pin in the third-place match.
Digby went 4-2 also and was responsible for 19 team points. He improved his record at 190 to 24-12.
The sophomore pinned the fourth-seed Derek Strong of Tonkawa in the first round posted a major decision over Weslan Brewer of Pawnee in the second round.
Digby won a 7-3 decision in the quarterfinals over sixth seed Lane Gourley of Little Axe, then lost to last year’s state champion Kruz Goff of Blackwell.
Digby rebounded winning his consolation semifinals match by pin against Robert Barnett of Kingfisher. He then lot by pin to state-qualifier Ernesto Duenez of Watonga.
Sophomore Luke Johnson placed sixth, scored 14 team points and is an alternate at 165 for State. He is 32-13 after going 4-3 at Regionals.
Johnson suffered a fall to Watonga’s Dayson Cash in the first round but responded with four straight victories.
Johnson was pinned by Perry’s Ethan Hughes in the consolation semifinals and by Cale Mcpeek of Pawnee in the fifth-place match.
Cayden Buckaloo wrestled Feb. 13-14 at the Girls’ Regional Meet at Mustang. The sophomore took sixth and like Johnson, she’s an alternate for State.
Buckaloo went 2-3 at Regionals and finished her first year of wrestling at 14-5.
Buckaloo went 2-1 on day one, winning her first two matches by fall. She pinned fourth-ranked Jocelyn Noel of Yukon in the third period and Kylie Willer of Lawton High in the second. Her first loss was a fall to Norman’s Corine Lowe in the third.
Buckaloo lost twice on day two, a 6-4 decision to top-ranked Rayleigh Fisher of Tuttle and by fall to Perry’s Isabel Stoops in the second.
“That’s the toughest tournament she’d ever been to and the best she’d ever wrestled,” Bates said. “She left it all out there the whole time. She wrestled tough.”
May and Digby will represent Davis Feb. 24-25 at the Class 3A State Tournament at the Fairgrounds Arena in Oklahoma City.
