Feb 9, 2009
Austin Brawner, Justin Britt, Trevor Byrd and Tyler Zimmerman are on a roll after the Lebanon wrestlers captured Ozark Conference titles on Saturday at Hillcrest High School in Springfield.
They helped the Yellowjackets place second at the meet, just 1.5 points behind the winner, Waynesville. Now, they will prepare for the Missouri Class 4 District 3 meet, which will hold its seed meeting on Thursday.
Lebanon head coach Randy Roark said the key to the Yellowjackets strong performance at the conference meet was its performance against the champion — Waynesville — as three of Lebanon’s wrestlers recorded big wins over a Tiger opponent they had lost to earlier in the season.
Zimmerman had lost to Russell Flores earlier in the season, but recorded a second-period pin over the Waynesville wrestler in a testy match on Saturday. Austin Brawner lost to Gabe Asano, 18-9, earlier in the season, but pinned him in Saturday’s title match. And Nick Nekola defeated Julian Hutchins in a semifinal, 15-6, on Saturday after falling to the Waynesville wrestler 19-8 earlier this season.
The match was so close that had any little thing gone Lebanon’s way, they would have won the conference team title. Had they pulled out another individual title, they would have won easily.
Lebanon’s Kyle Hansen (125 pounds), Aaron Starnes (135), Nick Nekola (152) and Zach Drinkal (189) all advanced to a championship match on Saturday.
Drinkal took his opponent, Camdenton’s Clifton Luber, to overtime before falling to the state’s No. 4 ranked wrestler at 189-pounds in Missouri Class 3, 10-8.
“We picked up a lot of (district) seeding criteria,” Roark said. “It is tough to get guys a seed at districts, especially in our district ... so those three matches (Brawner, Nekola and Zimmerman) helped us to hopefully get a seed at districts.”
The junior varsity won seven matches and placed second in four others.
“They kind of dominated,” Roark said.