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WRESTLING: Ozark’s dominant start spoils Neosho’s Senior Night

By:
Brock Sisney

NEOSHO, Mo. — The Ozark Tigers won the first eight matches and scored the first 34 points on their way to a 37-21 win in their dual on Thursday night against the host and Central Ozark Conference rival Neosho Wildcats.

“This team has a lot of potential,” Neosho coach Jeremy Phillips said. “We’re not disciplined because of our mentality. We’re not as tough as we need to be in our mental mindset. Just expecting to win, expecting to compete … and wrestling our match aggressively.

“Tonight, we struggled to be aggressive. Ozark’s ranked fourth in Class 4 and you saw tonight why. They’re always coached well and a solid program, and they brought it to us. We were on our heels taking it in several matches tonight.”

Appropriately enough on their Senior Night, Neosho’s four seniors each won their respective matches Thursday: Collyn Kivett (157 pounds) won a 2-1 decision against Brock Sundlie, Eli Zar (165) pinned Lucas Campbell 44 seconds into the second period, Ulysses DeLeon (195) pinned Johnny Williams in 1:33, and Nico Olivares (285) won 6-1 against Peyton Greer.

Neosho freshman Everson Tomlinson (195) won 9-6 against Ruben Arvizu, but otherwise it was all Ozark on Thursday against a Neosho squad with six freshmen starting Thursday.

“This is a solid group of seniors,” Phillips said. “The challenge before them is to help these younger underclassmen maybe help them learn some of the things that helped them (the seniors) get where they’re at. Before we wrestled tonight, I told them to refer back to when they were freshmen and sophomores and some of their mindsets and some of the things they struggled with mentally, so they can help some of these freshmen who are in our lineup, whether it’s overcoming anxieties or just being mentally tough in a tough match.”

Ozark’s Kaden Coffey (106) won 8-5 against Sam Fryer, Teagon Patterson (113) pinned Connor Reiboldt in 1:00, Damien Moseley (120) won 8-7 against Fisher Butler, Keaton Hurst (126) won by forfeit, Caden Harrington (132) won 7-2 against Hunter Butler, Levi Maskrod (138) won 8-1 against Josh Scheuerman, Daniel Laney (144) won a 12-2 major decision against Daniel Laney, Braxton Strick (150) pinned Kade Lawson in 22 seconds, and Kody Shepard (175) won 7-0 against Gabriel Busteed.

“We could possibly see them three more times,” Phillips said. “We’ve got conference with them, districts with them, and we’ve got obviously the state tournament with them. My goal would be to see the results that we had tonight and change those outcomes. Ultimately, it’s a team with potential, if our seniors will take and use their knowledge and experience to help us grow and learn from shortcomings like (Thursday).”

The Wildcats return to the mats next Thursday for their final dual of the regular season on the road against Carl Junction.

Two days later, Neosho, Carl Junction, and Ozark will be among the 10 schools competing in the COC Tournament.

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