It’s a totally different ‘wrestling scene’ but a pop culture reference suitable to fit the bill:
“If you want to be the man, you gotta beat the man!”
Ric Flair used that tagline as one of his many promo schticks in stating that if anyone wanted to get his championship belt, you had to beat him.
To a man, there wasn’t anyone ‘woooooooo’ing in the crowd Friday at the 44th annual Al Smith Invite, but championships were on the line. And Wawasee found out with its three competitors who were working on day two, they got beat by the champ.
At 106, Kaleb Salazar renewed pleasantries with an old wrestling mate in Julianna O’Campo of Fort Wayne Snider in the semis. Both knew each of the other’s tendencies, and it showed as the score was just 2-1 late in the third, Salazar up. O’Campo would score a late escape to tie matters and move to overtime. There O’Campo, who was the top seed in the bracket, dug deep and stuck Salazar for a takedown and fall to advance. O’Campo would go on to finish off a historical run, beating Lake Central in the championship to become the first female to win a weight class championship in the 44 years of the prestigious wrestling showcase.
Salazar come back with a 4-2 win over Columbus East’s Talon Jessup and fall, 8-0, to Bloomington South’s Cam Meier to secure fourth place overall in the 106 class.
“She’s a good wrestler, period. Not just good for a girl, just good. Period,” noted Wawasee head coach Frank Bumgardner. “In their match, it was just a great semi-state level dual. Technically, both were effective. Kaleb just got beat in overtime by a great opponent, a champion. I’m really proud of his work in this tourney. I’m pretty excited to see where he’s heading.”
At 195, the odds were stacked against Donnie Blair. And while he beat several of them in day one (and escaped maybe one or two others), Blair was also pitted against the top seed in the grid as his first match – Christian Chavez of Mishawaka. Chavez continued to roll, and once he got Blair into grips, it didn’t take long to get the Wawasee junior into a roll and a pin to move on. Chavez would close out his final match to stay unbeaten on the season, leaving a bar set for Blair to chase in the weeks to come in the conference dual and the NLC circuit in mid-January.
Blair would lose his next match to Crown Point’s Anthony White via first-round pin, but stayed in control of his pace and scored a 5-3 win over James Veal of Merrillville to close out a very respectable fifth place in a loaded bracket.
“Donnie just ran a good, tactical match,” Bumgardner lent to the Merrillville win. “He backed out-of-bounds a couple times, but negated what Veal tried to do. He got a takedown at the end of the match, stayed in control and didn’t panic. Just stayed the course.”
At 152, Hunter Miller had already lost to the day’s eventual champion – Anthony Rinehart of Crown Point – in Thursday’s quarterfinals. But in a bracket that featured nine of the state’s top 19 athletes, there was still plenty of work to do for Miller.
That push started very slowly in what shaped up to be a very sluggish, methodical grinder against Bloomington South’s Evan Roudebush. In a six-minute crawl that had just one takedown – Roudebush early in the first period – the slow burn of the Bloomington South delivery didn’t allow Miller any room to move. A 3-2 loss left Miller challenging for seventh, to which he would get it in a similar 4-1 final over Carroll’s Jackson Todd, again a match featuring just one takedown through five-and-a-half minutes before Miller put the match away with a twoooooooo with 25 seconds to go.
“Hunter stayed engaged in the scenarios and worked them to his advantage,” Bumgardner said of the Miller-Todd contest. “He had no reservations in his approaches but stylistically, can we get the job done. There was just one takedown in that match with a minute left and Carroll never really threatened him. That’s how well Hunter wrestled there.”
Crown Point and its band of nationally-ranked men crushed the field with seven of the 14 champions and 318 championship team points for that honor as well. Center Grove had a champion and three runners-up to claim second overall in the team standings with 238 points. Wawasee had 85 points for 16th overall.