While the Baylor School wrestling program’s streak of consecutive state duals championships was snapped last weekend at four in a row, the Red Raiders are well in the hunt to win the TSSAA Division II state traditional tournament for the fifth consecutive year.
Their road to redemption received positive results Saturday at home, as all 14 Baylor wrestlers qualified for next weekend’s state tourney at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville. The Red Raiders also waltzed to the Division II East Region championship by scoring 280.5 team points, 50.5 more than runner-up MBA.
Baylor’s William Phillips won 3-2 over McCallie’s Axel Ritchie in the 106-pound title bout, while Ryan Tisdale made a resilient return to the mat with a 4-1 tiebreaker victory over MBA’s Mac Rusi at 145. Nathaniel Askew (138), Hunter Sturgill (152), Odin Phillips (160) and Omaury Alvarez (182) also won individual titles for the Red Raiders.
Father Ryan defeated a Tisdale-less Baylor, 33-28, in the state duals final last weekend. The Fighting Irish won the D-II West Region title Saturday with a team score of 309.5 and qualified 12 wrestlers for the state tournament.
Boyd Buchanan’s Nolan Hardman (113) beat Baylor’s Jacob Bond 5-3 in the finals, where Hardman’s Buccaneers teammate Kaiden Bates (170) won 12-0 against Grace Christian’s Logan Mavroff, who has 53 wins this season. The Bucs won the program’s first team state championship in last weekend’s DII-A/AA duals, where Conor Payne (152) pinned two opponents while wrestling for the last time this season on a torn ACL.