The New Richmond High School wrestling team is carrying a lot of momentum into the last three weeks of the regular season after winning the Milford Invitational Tournament this past weekend.

The New Richmond High School wrestling team is carrying a lot of momentum into the last three weeks of the regular season after winning the Milford Invitational Tournament this past weekend.
By Chris Chaney
Sports Editor

The New Richmond High School wrestling team proved at the Milford Invitational Tournament this past weekend that you don’t need a cavalcade of champions to win a tournament. Instead, the Lions put their own spin on an old Chinese proverb: victory by a thousand cuts.

New Richmond bested Mason, the hosts — Milford — Sycamore and 16 other teams to win the Milford Invite on Jan. 30, boosting the team’s confidence as it enters an important stretch of events.

“The kids wrestled really well this past weekend. We filled all of the weight classes using a couple of JV kids and one of them even placed,” Lions head coach Deron Shinkle said. “We didn’t have any champions last weekend, but we did wrestle consistently all the way through.”

The Lions’ Brandon Planck notched the team’s best finish coming in second place to Tyler Norris of Thomas Worthington High School at 126 pounds. Third place finishers included Lane Dees (132 pounds), Ryan Buckley (160 pounds) and Justin Noble (220 pounds). Fourth place finishers for the Lions were Gavin Clark (145 pounds) and Trent Felts (170 pounds). Fifth place finishers were Elijah Richards (106 pounds), Austin Planck (120 pounds) and Ryan Wolf (138 pounds). The lone New Richmond sixth place finisher was Toby Kahn (182 pounds).

The Lions only failed to have a grappler place in four weight classes — 113 pounds, 152 pounds, 195 pounds and 285 pounds.

The victory was one of the most impressive of the season for a team that has high hopes as the schedule dwindles and points towards the postseason in just a few weeks.

“It really boosts our confidence,” Shinkle said. “We’ve really wrestled a lot of matches this year. I knew we were going to have a young team, so that’s why I scheduled a lot of dual meet tournaments and tournaments of (the Milford Invitational’s) nature to get us as much experience as we could. It’s really helped us out.”

Shinkle expects this momentum to help his team as they move forward into the quarterfinals of the state duals on Feb. 3, the upcoming Southern Buckeye Conference Tournament on Saturday, Feb. 6, the Batavia Invitational the following Saturday, Feb. 13 and the sectional tournament on Feb. 19 and 20.

“It really gives the kids confidence,” Shinkle said. “Now, they’re used to doing this style of wrestling and (they) know the toughness of the competition.”

The Lions will have a double dip of Western Brown this week when they face the Broncos in the state duals and then again as the prohibitive favorites at the SBC Tournament on Saturday.

“Wednesday night is going to be a tough match. Western Brown is the top dog and they’re a top-notch team,” Shinkle said. “Our kids don’t back down from nothing. They’re concentrating on what they need to do. We need to get bonus points when we can and not give up any bonus points to get things to go our way.

“On Saturday, I’m really looking forward to the kids all placing because we’re going to have to have all placers if we’re going to come close to or beat Western Brown. They’ll probably have several champions so we’re going to have to match them champ for champ in different weight classes and hopefully beat them in other placing areas as well.

“That’s the way you have to do it going into those kind of things. It’s really tough to do in an eight-man or 10-man bracket because there’s not a lot of places you can score the extra points — the pins, the majors and the tech falls.”

With some heady competition down the stretch, coupled with the success the Lions have accrued to this point, Shinkle is bullish about New Richmond’s prospects in the sectional.

“We should probably get quite a few through to districts,” he said. “It’s a little different this year because we’re going to see some different teams in our sectional. I would hope we would have at least six to eight district qualifiers to go on to Wilmington.”