The Baylor School Claims "The Prep Slam 15" Crown
On Friday, the Holy Innocents Golden Bears “The Prep Slam 15” wrestling tournament resumed with day two action that included the semifinals and championships along with third and fifth place matches. With The Baylor School (Chattanooga, Tennessee) and The Lovett School (Atlanta, Georgia) advancing the most wrestlers to the final rounds of matches, they would be the favorites to win the tournament outright.
However, The Baylor School would get the first win in the championship round as Oliver Phillips would cruise to a 19-7 win over Forrest Briesacher of The Marist School (Atlanta, Georgia) in the 106 weight class. Not to be outdone, Lovett’s Alex Hyman would take the very next match as he defeated The Baylor School’s Jacob Bond 4-2 in one of the closest matches of the championship round. As the matches continued, The Baylor School would win back to back matches, including Hunter Sturgill’s win over Lovett’s Chris Mance at 157.
As “The Prep Slam 15” closed out with another win for Lovett thanks to Christian Bell’s 12-6 win over Pace Academy’s Roland Foster, prior to that, Baylor would notch one more victory themselves as Dylan Crawford would pick up a second round win by fall over Walker Walls of Bishop Lynch at the 215 weight class helping Baylor place first in the tournament, Lovett taking the second place position. “I’m really proud of them,” Baylor head coach Rex Kendle said of his wrestlers performances on the mat following the award ceremony.
Kendle noted that his wrestlers faced their share of adversity throughout the tournament and their ability to overcome the challenges they faced spoke volumes in regards to their perseverance. “Almost everybody found a challenge,” Kendle said referring to some of his wrestler’s over time wins in the semifinals. “Those were just gut checks and that’s only going to help us towards our end goal of being as good as we possibly can be and so I’m really happy with it,” Kendle said.
And while Kendle was happy with the results of the annual tournament hosted by Holy Innocents, the former Michigan State University and four-time Big Ten Academic All-American wrestler noted that with many of his wrestlers just getting active on the mat in recent weeks, due to being members of the school’s football team, which just wrapped up their season in December with a state championship, there are still some areas they want to work on. “There’s a lot of things we can clean up, but we got good film and yea, I’m proud of them,” Kendle said.
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