CLEVELAND, Tenn. — There was little pre-meet talk of the Bradley Central and Soddy-Daisy wrestling teams ending in a dead heat, but few expected Bradley to set a fast pace from the outset and turn an annual neck-and-neck race into a 51-17 runaway.
Eight matches in, Bradley had lapped the visiting Trojans, winning seven bouts — six by pin with one forfeit — to forge an insurmountable 42-3 advantage.
The third-ranked Bears administered the worst defeat a Soddy-Daisy team has suffered since the 2010 state duals against Bradley.
The mantra all week for Bradley has been let’s send a message.
“I feel like we at least halfway did that,” Bears coach Ben Smith said. “It was a fun match for us — unexpected on our part because they’ve had our number for three years and they’re a quality program with quality kids and quality coaches. I just think our guys were ready. The mindset has been good, and things have just kind of going our way. We won some close ones, which was good for our kids to see that they can wrestle with upper-caliber kids.”
The win also handed Bradley the district championship and a berth in the opposite bracket from defending state champion Cleveland for the region duals. Smith took extra time talking with his team, so much that the meet was 20 minutes late getting started. It worked so well that he might employ such tactics in the future.
“I did put a lot more hype on this match with our guys because of the district and what it should do for the region duals,” he said.
The eighth-ranked Trojans won just four matches: a pin by Austin Williamson (170), a technical fall by Emory Holcomb (138) and decisions from Austin Houser (132) and Elijah Cartwright (182).
“We made some extremely pivotal and costly mistakes. We made the kind of mistakes that were hard to come back from,” Soddy-Daisy coach Jim Higgins said. “Do I think the team score should’ve ended that way? Absolutely not. Are we capable of more than that? Absolutely.”
Bradley’s outstanding night was highlighted by 145-pound Donnie Beyer’s 6-4 overtime victory over the Trojans’ highly touted Tucker Russo.
“We had some kids come out and wrestle their good kids really well, and not only that but we found their backs,” Smith said.
Bradley winners were T.J. Hicks, Toribio Navarro, Ryan McElhaney, Knox Fuller, Beyer, Caleb Atkins, Jack Bandy, James Elkins, Brett Brown and D.J. Adams.
“I don’t think we’re that much better than Soddy-Daisy. It was one of those matches where it was going to be really close or a blowout,” Smith said. “Everything could go really right or really bad, and a lot of things went really right for us. We got on a roll early, and it shell-shocked them a little.”
Higgins hopes his team can about-face quickly with the Trojans getting in better shape and perhaps rededicating themselves and concentrating more on being focused before the region tournament series begin.
“We have talked already about this being a learning experience,” he said. “It’s hard to stop momentum. I hope our kids learn from it, but at the same time you have to acknowledge that Bradley has put in a ton of hard work and it is paying off.”
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.