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Show Smoot, Fisher spe. third place showings in Layton Crmmmv " f miiimmiipwpiwiip milium m i N 0O Srfjli1 PL I) Y-- n l ww sif -s'wf J . ., jferrsswt. fit' - . "z;:' .;., '... ,.JMiiiw . ' . .. .J. By KEITH DUNCAN LAYTON They came from the south and they came from the north, strength brewing from both. But in the end, Box Elder High made a mountain to climb as the Bees racked up 210 first place points to win the fifth annual Layton High Wrestling Invitational Invitation-al held last Friday and Saturday at the high school. The traditionally strong Bees went away from the tournament with three first place champions and three more that took second to beat Granger who ended up with 165 points. Pleasant Grove ended up with 1 59 12 points, Spanish Fork gained 126'2 to place fourth and Davis High was fifth with 100 points. Layton made a respectable showing by tallying 92 points for sixth place. The rest of the teams - and their respective point totals were Emery 87':, West Jordan 87'2, Weber 82'2, Orem 65'2, Wasatch 64 '2, Viewmont 58'2, Pine view 54 '2, Bountiful 31 , Clearfield Clear-field 27 and Roy 14. It was the season's first major high school wrestling tournament which saw 192 preps battle for 12 1 championship slots. Amazingly enough, and for the first time since the tournament was organized, not a single champion emerged from a Davis County school. Two wrestlers however, Davis' " Rob Warden and Layton's Tim : LaFette claimed second places v during the Saturday night cham- pionship round. : The following is a brief rundown : of each of the county teams in-: in-: volved in the two-day event: j I I 1 Viewmont' s Shandell Smoot manhandles Pleasant Grove opponent in the third place match during Saturday night's Layton High Wrestling tournament. Smoot, in his first Utah tournament, narrowly lost to Granger's Dave Marsh, the defending state champion, cham-pion, in a semifinal match. Smoot finished third. the Lancers in their own tournament tourna-ment was heavyweight Tim LaFette, LaFet-te, who's been as steady and consistent con-sistent as anyone over the past three years for Coach Mike Hansen. LaFette, according to Hansen, will be someone to contend with this year. He has certainly got off on the right foot by battling his way into the championship during the Layton tournament, before losing the title bout to Box Elder's Kyle Larson 2-0. So it was just a takedown take-down that prevented LaFette from winning it all. "My feelings about the team became be-came much better as the two days Continued on next page! : VIEWMONT The Vikings, : under the direction of second year ; head coach Bart Thompson, had a pair of wrestlers take third place, j Jeff Fisher claimed a third place victory in the heavyweight class 1 and Shandell Smoot took third in a ; very difficult 155-pound class. Fisher got sweet revenge in his - last match as he beat Darwin Holi-: Holi-: day of Emery who had earlier : beat him in the second round, r Fisher got in trouble in the first ; match and was pinned but came back Saturday night to beat Holi-r Holi-r day with a pin of his own with 1 :35 left in the third period. Smoot was ahead of Granger's ? Dave Marsh 6-3 with just 30 ; seconds left but somehow found a I way to lose that match, thus ; knocking him out of the champion- ship bracket. Marsh, the defending : state champion, foltowed-up that dramatic win with another victory on Saturday night to win the title at : 155. Smoot then came back and won T two more matches to take home third place. He won 7-3 over Pleasant Grove's Darren Henry on Saturday night, i Smoot, the song of long-time r Davis County resident Stan : Smoot, is just back in Utah this " school year after three years in Ohio where his father served as a mission president for the LDS h Church. During Shandell's stay in r Ohio, the Viking junior learned plenty about wrestling from top quality coaches and athletes, r Wrestling, according to Smoot, is a r way of life in Ohio and surrounding states. "We're young and improving," z said Thompson of his overall team, r "This was a fairly tough touma- r. ment that was difficult to place in f but we had kids get a victory or r two before they left." Thompson said the attitude of the team is a light year ahead of last year and with Fisher and Smoot helping out in the leadership area, things are on the rise. Viewmont will be hosting a tournament tour-nament of their own on Dec. 19 and 20. Other Viking wrestlers in the tournament included Scott Thomas Tho-mas 98, Dax George 105, Shawn Owen 112, Kevin Randall 119, I Allen Freestone 126, Lance Bar-Iraclaug Bar-Iraclaug 132, Darrin Zesiger 138, Matt Morrill 145, Corey George 167, and Bobby Romerez 185. BOUNTIFUL Bountiful's Jerry Staley feels things are on the uprise at Bountiful, despite the fact there is a very young team being fielded. Going into the Layton tournament, only two seniors existed ex-isted on the entire team. "We've got some talented kids at certain weights, especially among the juniors," said Staley. One of the fine juniors includes Richard Eggett at 155 where he took sixth place in Layton last weekend. Richard has a younger brother Ryan who is battling at 138. The Braves appear confident in Jeff Black at eighter 1 12 or 105 and Mackie Lucio at either 1 19 or 1 12. Lucio was a region champion for the Braves at 105 a year ago, perhaps one of the quicker kids on the entire team. Shane Olsen dislocated a knee cap and the Braves are hopeful he will be back for the Viewmont tournament at 126. Rick Johnson placed sixth at Layton last weekend at 132 and Coach Staley is expecting big things from him throughout the year. Johnson, a junior, is quite strong for his weight class. "We need to push each other in practice," said Staley, "Because we've got the makings of a fairly respectable club." LAYTON The bright spot for oooLajtom toiffney breaks seasi pen .inn. I.-, ,r-;-Mir- w - . r w--" 'TA T" jllllllllpS: Lay ton's Tyler Sessions 11-5. "Rob has a lot of work to do before he can rise up and be a state champion because there are a lot of tough kids in his weight class. He's not at the top of his game and he should know that. He wants to get better and that's what counts," said Isom. Overall, the Davis team had other bright spots as well. 98-pounder Dan Stephenson took fifth and had a great tournament tourna-ment considering his experience. Todd Harris came through with a fourth place finish for the Darts at 112 pounds. Russell Porter came through with a fifth place ranking at 126 and Maurice Harker ended up sixth place at 138. . . ... The highest finish outside Warden's War-den's was Clint Allen's fine third place finish at 167. He gained a forefeit victory over Weber s John Taylor in the final match. Sean Smith won a couple of matches before he lost to View-mont's View-mont's Fisher to knock him from the tournament. Continued from previous page wore on," said Hansen, "Tim and the rest of the kids generally got better with each match they had. I really feel pretty good about things." Besides LaFette's second place, Tom Moore gained a third place finish at 145 with a 7-1 victory over Wasatch's Jeff Wade. "Tom got noticably better with each match," said Hansen. Another bright spot was Tyler Sessions at 185 where he took fourth place, losing to Pineview's Troy Talbot 1 1-5 in the last match. Up until his last match, Sessions had improved a great deal. Another placer at the Layton tournament was 167-pounder Mike Barnes who took sixth place. Other placers for the Lancers included in-cluded Mike Brown at 98, where he took sixth place. Hansen called Brown's performance "a nice job." Greg Loveless wrestled well during the Layton event, winning a couple of matches. "None of our kids have had any real hard varsity experience, but despite that they came through pretty well," said Hansen, "And we'll get more competitive as things go along." . DAVIS "We're a slow starter," star-ter," said Davis' Jeff lsom, "But in time we will start picking up the pace." With that however, the Davis High wrestling team made a fairly impressive showing at the fifth annual Layton High wrestling tournament tour-nament by staking claim to fifth place with 100 points, the finest showing of any of the five Davis County schools involved. . "We perhaps could have moved into fourth had some seeding mistakes mis-takes not been done and we made a better showing in the consolation round. "But the season is still young and the kids are working hard. We're excited about the rest of the season." said lsom. The featured attraction for Dart wrestling fans was the showing that 185-pounder Rob Warden put forth. The aggressive Dart was quite disappointed he couldn't beat Box Elder's Greg Watson in the championship round but the fire in his eyes afterwards showed that he'll go back to work and try it again. Prior to meeting Watson, Warden War-den had breezed into the finals by beating Lane Clark of Weber 9-5, Granger's Phil Wagner with a pin and finally an impressive win over Viewmont's Jeff Fisher smothers Darwin Holiday of Emery County High in the third place match Saturday night. ( I t 1 J ' f V I . sVm- ?N ST) 1 Jmm ,avl J,J I llillte, . ! (L - flWWavjs... V ...I Richard Eggett of Bountiful goes for a ride over the back of a Weber wrestling opponent during action at the Layton tour nament. Eggett lost the match. |
