CP wins final team regional

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Crown Point's Tyler Kral and Lake Central's Gelon Robinson meet on the mat during the team regional finals at Portage High School on Wednesday, February 1, 2012. | Mark Smith~Sun-Times Media

Team Wrestling Regional

2-1-12 @ Portage - SEMIFINALS

CROWN POINT 47, Lake Central 21

MERRILLVILLE 46, Portage 20

CHAMPIONSHIP

CROWN POINT 36, MERRRILVILLE 20

CROWN POINT 36, MERRILLVILLE 20

2-1-12 @ Portage - regional final match began at 126

126 (5-0) Trevor Burlison (CP) 17-1 tech fall over Michael Martin

132 (5-3) Al Padilla (M) 6-1 over Cameron Halstead

138 (8-3) Tyler Burlison (CP) 8-6 over Willie Armstrong

145 (14-3) Trevor Blue (CP) pinned Matt Holinas - 1:14

152 (20-3) Jason Tsirtsis (CP) pinned Zack Sandefur - 1:41

160 (20-6) Bobby Steveson (M) 9-3 over Jake Fuqua

170 (24-6) Dusty Schurg (CP) 11-1 over Darryl Peppers

182 (27-6) Morgan Kral (CP) 11-5 over Eric DeLuna

195 (27-11) Kourtney Berry (M) pinned Matt Langbehn - 1:05

220 (30-11) Tyler Kral (CP) 2-1 (OT) over Michael Nickson

HWT (33-11) Josh Swope (CP) 6-0 over Trevor Williams

106 (33-14) Justin Johnson (M) 10-3 over Riley O’Keefe

112 (36-14) Dardy Schurg (CP) 9-3 over Adam Brodie

120 (36-20) Adam Garcia (M) pinned John Elllison - 2:57

CP (21-0) MERRILLVILLE (19-2)

CROWN POINT 47, LAKE CENTRAL 21

2-1-12 - regional semifinal @ Portage

103 - Branden Truver (LC) pinned Brett Ervin - 3:31

113 - Dusty Schurg (CP) won by forfeit

120 - Josh Fuqua (CP) 5-1 over Matt Lechowicz

126 - Kyle Ayersman (LC) pinned Trevor Burlison - 1:40

132 - Cameron Halstead (CP) pinned Tom Retske - 1:39

138 - Mike Escobedo (LC) 7-5 over Tyler Burlison

145 - Jason Tsirtsis (CP) 19-4 over Joe Vargas

152 - Jake Fuqa (CP) 11-1 over Kodie Christensen

160 - Dusty Schurg (CP) pinned Brandon Manchak - 5:30

170 - Jeff Brassea (LC) 11-7 over Jacob Hazi

182 - Morgna Kral (CP) pinned Tom Minekma - 5:30

195 - Matt Langbehn (CP) 16-7 over Issac Popovich

220 - Gelen Robinson (LC) 10-4 over Tyler Kral

HWT - Josh Swope (CP) pinned Dennis Schumaker

Article Extras

Updated: February 7, 2012 2:44PM

PORTAGE — These team wrestling regionals, they end late on a midweek night in a neutral site.

Everybody wants to go home.

It’s 10 p.m. before folks get on the bus. But Crown Point was again the “closer,” the last team to leave the building before they turn the lights off.

In more ways than one.

Winning the team regional for a fifth consecutive season with wins over Lake Central 47-21 and Merrillville 46-20, the Bulldogs (21-0) shut the whole thing down in this, the final year of the team wrestling tournament.

Crown Point now waits until the end of the individual state tournament to cash in their ticket to Center Grove to face Kokomo in the quarterfinals of the eight-team state team finals on Feb 25.

It wasn’t a shock that CP defeated Merrillville. The Bulldogs topped the Pirates 36-14 in a dual meet last month.

But in that December match, undefeated Merrillville star Kourtney Berry did not wrestle and CP’s 145-pound star Jason Tsirtsis, was bumped up to 160 pounds to defeat Merrillville freshman star Bobby Steveson. And during the regular season, you can wrestle a 106-pounder at heavyweight if you want to. In the state tournament, you can only move up one weight. So Tsirtsis could not meet Steveson again.

Assuming that Berry would win and that Steveson (30-1) would win at 160, there was a thought that Merrillville could upset CP and steal the regional title last week.

Well, Berry did win at 195 and Steveson did win at 160, but CP won almost every place else in a strong display of experience and team depth.

The key moment in the title match came after CP’s Trevor Burlison began the night with a 17-1 win over Michael Martin, giving the second-ranked Bulldogs a quick 5-0 lead.

With CP leading 8-3, state champ Jason Tsirtsis’ 145-pound bracket came up and CP coach Scott Vlink sent out senior Trevor Blue to wrestle at 145, holding back Tsirtsis (34-0) to take on Merrillville’s Zack Sandefur at 152.

“I knew it for two days,” said Blue. “I’ve wrested him before him before so I was pretty confident. I wanted to make a statement.

“What really got me was when Trevor (Burlison) gave that extra effort to get that tech fall.”

“It got things going and then Jason got that pin (at 152) and we were really rolling. We knew we had it.”

“Jason is just so great. He’s a great motivator. “The back-to-back pins by Blue and Tsirtsis blew the 8-3 lead up to 20-3 and gave CP a large cushion to survive some Merrillville wins by state-rated stars Bobby Steveson (160) and Kourtney Berry (195).

When Tyler Kral, who lost his first match of the season earlier Wednesday evening to Lake Central star Gelon Robinson, came back to defeat Merrillville’s highly regarded Michael Nickson in overtime, CP had clinched a berth in the state finals.

“Do you realize that Kral, Robinson and Nickson were 1, 3 and 4 in the state?” said Vlink. “This was a state finals Saturday field. Tyler made a couple of technical errors against Robinson and we’ll work on that. But he showed character by coming back when we needed him.”

“Everyone falls,” said Kral, the DAC champion. “I’d rather take a loss here than in any of the next two tournaments.”

But the back-to-back pins by Blue and Tsirtsis were the highlight of the night.

“This is an unbelievable experience,” said Blue as the gym started to clear after the championship match.

“Words almost can’t describe how good it feels. Especially to be in the match at a key point in the match. The atmosphere is terrific, especially when the team is behind you.”

At the end of the night, there was Trevor Blue starring in what may be his one post-season chance.

“It very well could be,” he said. “I’m not in the individual tournament. This is my contribution. Jason always says to wrestle every match like it’s the last match of your senior year.”

“That’s the thing about any good program,” said Vlink. “All of our kids, the worst guys in the room do every bit as much in the room as the best guy. Some guys just aren’t as good at it as others.

“But in Trevor Blue’s case, he’s sitting behind a guy (Tsirtsis) who is arguably the best wrestler in the nation at his weight class. Not just the state but the nation. What is he going to do?

“He kept his head up. Kept a positive attitude. And for that reason, he will go down as a solid teammate forever. If he’d have snuck away and cried about it, he’d have been Trevor Blue the quitter.

“But he brought his best effort to the room and made everybody around him better in the process. If that pin tonight was the last match this kid ever wrestles, that’s a great finish. There’s just a lot to be said for character and what Trevor Blue has done this year shows character.”

Merrillville coach David Maldonado said that CP’s ability to move Tsirtsis around to where they needed him enabled them to best his boys again.

“When they can move guys around like they can it’s tough,” he said. “We didn’t have the match-ups we wanted. Some of our kids didn’t wrestle up to what they can do. We anticipated them moving guys around but there’s not much we can do to counter that.

“I thought if we could win at 126, then we could win at 132, (Cameron) Halsted is a tough kid but Padilla beat him. Then we gave up a fall at 145 and Tsirtsis won at 152. We changed our game plan a couple of times during the night and in the end we put our younger guys out there to get experience. Now it’s time to focus on the individual kids. We’ll wrestle them (CP) again in two weeks (at the semistate) at our place.”

For CP, there was no talk about getting revenge on Merrillville for the Pirates’ upset win over CP in the DAC finals on Jan. 14. Crown Point people had talked all season about how they wanted to win the final state team tournament.

“This is really special to me,” said Vlink. “To win the regional five years in a row and representing the region four years in a row. That’s really something. We’re going to make a big deal out of that. Some kind of commemorate T-shirt. ‘Representing the region for the last time’ or something like that. I’m really proud.”

REGIONAL NOTES: Portage athletic director Jeff Smith clearly was not in favor of ending the team wrestling tournament.

“This was a great atmosphere here tonight,” said Smith after almost 1,000 people gathered to watch the top four teams in the DAC go head-to-head. Letter jackets from Griffith, Lowell and Chesterton were visible in the stands.

“Maybe downstate nobody cares and they’re putting JV wrestlers in the team tournament but not up here.”

Coach Scott Vlink wanted to give credit to strength coach Mark Garrett.

“I love what we’re doing in the weight room. I don’t have to worry about my kids,” he said. “As long as they’re in class, Mark Garret will take care of them. I just have to make sure that they know that anything short of a bust-your-butt workout is not acceptable.”

Crown Point was the 2009 state team champion and has lost in the quarterfinals the last two seasons. Little is known up here about Kokomo wrestling, but it is the only team at the finals not ranked in the state Top 20.