by JOHN HOWLEY / sportingpumpkin.com
COLUMBUS — A pair of seniors will be battling for a shot at third place Sunday morning while a local junior will be wrestling for seventh when the third day of the state wrestling championships begins.
Westfall’s Gage Bolt is going for third at 165 pounds in Division III and Teays Valley’s Ava Miller will be going for third at 110 pounds in the girls’ tournament.
Logan Elm’s Gavin Hoover will be going for seventh place in the Division II 126-pound weight class.
Miller (36-8) was in the championship semifinals when she ran up against freshman juggernaut Mackenzie Carder (37-1) from Olentangy Orange. Carder pinned Miller in 1:12 to advance to Sunday’s finals and put Miller in the consolation bracket.
The two met last week at the regional where Carder pinned Miller in 1:23.
Miller will be back at it Sunday morning fighting to see how high of a spot she can earn on the podium. She can place no lower than sixth. She faces New Richmond’s Charley Jones (44-5) in the consolation semifinals in the morning.
Bolt faced off against Waynesville’s Levi Collins in the consolation quarterfinals, got an early lead and kept Collins in check to advance 4-0.
“You’ve got to get your takedown, it’s the first thing you’ve got to do – it’s only a one-minute period,” Bolt said. “You’ve got to get it done and be up 2-0, that’s a big thing. It plays in the opponent’s head, too.
“In the second period, in my opinion, I thought I had back points on a couple different tilts, I won’t lie about that one. It didn’t go my way, so I just kept on trying.
“The third period, I was going down — I was up two and I didn’t see him getting back points on me.”
“When you’re at the state tournament it’s very key to get that first takedown. Because then they’re’ trying to chase you and (the first period) is only a minute long,” Westfall coach Will Breyer said. “We’ve been talking about it the whole time that when you put pressure on kids out here, the time goes faster and faster when you’re losing.”
Wrestling with the lead, Bolt was able to wait for his moment and added a couple of points with a reversal with about 40 seconds left in the match.
“We’ve been working on down all year,” Breyer said. “He’s fantastic on his feet, he’s fantastic on top – his bottom wrestling is the one place that we’ve been trying to improve. We have said all year that if he had to go down at states, he’s got to get out. And that was one of those opportunities.”
Bolt comes back in the morning to face Malvern’s Tyson Clear (45-3) in the consolation semifinals.
“After last year, placing sixth, I’ve got a chance to redeem myself now and hopefully be on the top four just like my coach (Tim Geiger) was,” Bolt said. “That’s the goal is to go for third, one off the coach.”
Hoover (49-7) dropped into the seventh-place match after a 5-3 loss to Graham Local’s Blaine DeMarco.
The two had some familiarity as they had practiced together a few times in the past weeks.
“He didn’t have a very good match. Give the takedown up in the first period, we get an escape and that’s the best thing you can get out of that, so we start 2-1,” LE coach Jake Daniels said. “We’re on top and typically pretty good on top, but we didn’t ride him and he gets an escape and another takedown, we we’re in bad shape.
“It’s hard to climb out of the hole at this stage of the game.”
Hoover will come back Sunday morning and go up against Vinton County’s Travis Bucklew (51-4).
“We’ll wrestle a kid he wrestled in the sectional championship. We lost that in one (9-8) in an ultimate tiebreaker,” Daniels said. “Maybe we’ll get a little revenge on that one and finish on a high note for the season.
“That’s all we can hope for.”
Consolation semifinals in all divisions start at 9:30 Sunday with the consolations finals beginning at 10:45.