The youngsters in Maryland stepped on the grand stage in Indiana last weekend for the Kids’ Folkstyle Nationals. This is the first leg of the Triple Crown that also includes the Kids’ Freestyle and Greco Roman Nationals in the summer.
Maryland had two grapplers bring home top honors and line themselves up as potential Triple Crown winners, Korbin Kiessling (14U, 75lbs) and Logan Hartzell (12U, 117). Both of them competed on Day 1.
Kiessling is on track to win his third Triple Crown after last year’s and one captured in 2022. Outside of his finals match with New Jersey’s Georgie Dipsey, which was decided in Ultimate Tiebreaker, 1-1, Kiessling dominated his foes.
Interestingly, each of his matches successively lasted longer than the one before it (which makes sense as the deeper you go in a tournament, the competition becomes stiffer). In the round of 32, Kiessling stuck Iowa’s Ryder Uhlenhake in 37 seconds. The round of 16 saw a 44 second planting of Illinois’ Archer Smith.
Kiessling’s quarter final match lasted two minutes and 51 seconds before ending with a 17-2 technical fall of Indiana’s D’Angelo Chavez. In the semis, Kiessling finally went the distance in compiling a 12-1 major decision against another Illinois adversary, Grady Glowacki.
Hartzell stepped on the mat four times to earn his gold. Three of his bouts went the distance and were generally close affairs. In reverse order, Hartzell posted a 5-0 shutout of Illinois’ Dominic Englese in the finals.
Hartzell’s semifinal win was his closest match of the tournament, resulting in an 8-5 decision of Cash Perez (Michigan). The quarters provided his shortest and easiest victory, a 15-0 tech of Lane Burns of Indiana in 1:23. The round of 16 ended with a 5-0 blanking of Indiana’s Jonathan Nordyke Jr.
Two Day 2 competitors secured silver medals, Emil Cole (8U, 70lbs) and Subhan Ahmad (10U, 84lbs).
Cole’s bracket started with him in the quarters where he posted a 15-0 tech fall of Indiana’s Sebastian Valle in 2:00. Cloe needed overtime to reach the finals but did so with a 6-3 Sudden Victory win over New Jersey’s Rocco Knowles. The good times ended after that for Cole as Oklahoma’s Jaxon Huffman came up with a fall in 2:42 in the finals.
Ahmad wrestled three matches to reach the finals, picking up two shutout wins and a 7-1 decision in the round of 16. In the quarters, Ahmad rang up an 11-0 major decision of Michigan’s Palmer Smith. A 5-0 blanking of Indiana’s Anthony Quiroz came in the semis before dropping an 8-2 decision to Ari McKenna of Wisconsin in the championship bout.
On the second day, Colton Kirwan finished third in the 8U slate at 49lbs. Kirwan’s consolation final opponent was the same wrestler he opened up the action with in the round of 16, Xavier Almaguer of Washington. Kirwan pinned Almaguer in their opening match in 41 seconds then authored a 7-2 win in the third-place match.
Kirwan lost his quarter-final match with Iowa’s Nelson Zwanziger by fall, 2:58, then rallied back for four straight wins, including two pins and a major decision as he made his way to the consolation final. Indiana’s Nash Probst (1:46) and Minnesota’s Lightning Whiterabbit (cool name!) (:31) were his victims by fall. A 12-1 major decision vanquished Graham Werner of Wisconsin.
Highly decorated youth wrestler Tanner McCray-Bey placed fourth at 74lbs in the 12U Division on the first day. Like Kirwan, his first and last match was versus the same rival, Tennessee’s Kalix Kilpatrick. Unfortunately, as you can tell from the fourth-place finish, those matches resulted in losses.
In his opener with Kilpatrick, McCray-Bey was pinned in 3:46. In the third-place bout, he fell by a 13-5 major decision. In between those matches, McCray-Bey reeled of seven straight wins in the consolation bracket with three tech falls and one major decision mixed in with close matches versus Indiana’s Henry Riesen, 6-4, and Kansas’ Grant Lettmann, 4-3.
Braidyn Taby also experienced a first and last match with the same wrestler in Wisconsin’s Bret Horak. Taby placed fifth at 100lbs in the 14U brackets on the first day, blanking Horak in both encounters, 8-0 in the placement match and 17-0 in their opening meeting.
Two close losses doomed Taby to fifth as he lost to Pennsylvania’s Noah Losey, 5-2, in the quarters and Iowa’s Amir Newman-Winfrey, 7-5, in the consolation semifinals. Taby’s two other wins were by a decision and a tech fall.
Two Marylander’s placed seventh, one on each day. On day one, Ryker Stover placed in the 12U 135lb bracket and day two saw Chase Shrom put his work in at 45lbs in the 8U category.
Stover won his seventh-place match, 5-3, over Tennessee’s Preston Lebliner. Stover dropped his first match to Michigan’s Henry Begg by fall, 2:26, then rallied back in the consolation rounds, edging Braxton Troyer (Indiana), 1-0, and falling to another Indiana grappler, Quinton Siders, 7-1 in overtime.
Shrom was also tripped up in his first bout with Minnesota’s Theseus Yang-Elson by an 18-0 tech fall. Shrom’s 10-6 seventh-place match score over Michigan’s Wyatt Getgood was preceded by a loss by fall to Indiana’s Parker Duncan, 2:56, and a win over Gunner Heath (Indiana), 6-0.
One female Marylander made it to the awards stand with Grayson Richburg placing fourth at 120lbs in the 14U classification. Richburg continued the trend of Marylanders losing their first matches by succumbing to Georgia’s Kara-Lyn Dover by a 17-0 technical fall.
A pin of Nebraska’s Jayden Jones in 1:40 and a 17-0 tech of Indiana’s Ryan Gallagher placed Richburg in the consolation final where she came up short against Michigan’s Luciana Troyer, getting pinned in 2:36.
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