Elyria wrestlers falter at Walsh Jesuit Ironman

CUYAHGOA FALLS »Widely considered the toughest tournament in the country, the Walsh Jesuit Ironman continued on Dec. 9 and 38th-nationally ranked Elyria came away without a placer and finished with 31 total points.

But don’t get it confused that the trip wasn’t worth it for the Pioneers. Elyria coach Erik Burnett will find every way to make sure his wrestlers learn a valuable lesson after a tough weekend.

“The idea is to get better,” Burnett said. “You want all your kids to place and want them to walk out with hardware. That’s the obvious. But maybe not what’s as obvious is what do you take out of this tournament? Is it something that we’ve talked about at practice? Probably. Is it something we’ve executed or failed to execute at practice? Probably. So the question is, and this is the question I’ve posed to our kids, what are we going to do with this?”

Elyria had three wrestlers compete on the second day: Sophomore Dylan Shawver (113), senior Brendon Fenton (120), and senior Josh Breeding (132).

Fenton, a two-time state champion, lost to Malik Heinselman (Castle View, Colorado) in his quarterfinals match, 4-3. Heinselman is a United World Wrestling Junior FS World Team member. Fenton then lost his placement match to Anthony Molton (Lockport Township, Illinois) by a 10-1 major decision. Molton is a UWW Cadet Greco finalist.

Shawver lost his quarterfinals matchup to No. 16 in the nation, Ryan Chauvin (Lake Highland Prep, Florida), 6-1, before dropping his placement match in a 8-2 decision to Matt Ramos (Lockport Township, Illinois), a Fargo Cadet National champ.

Breeding, a Princeton commit, started his day in the consolations with a pin (2:16) over Reece Witcraft (Broken Arrow, Oklahoma), a Fargo Greco champion, to advance to the match to place. In the match to place, he got pinned (2:20) by Joshua Saunders (Christian Brothers College, Missouri), a Fargo Cadet champion.

“There’s a lot of stuff to work on,” Breeding said. “Obviously some good came out of it, I beat some tough guys, but to get to the next level, we’re going to have to work a little bit harder.”

In the past, whether the result was good or bad, wrestlers have used the Ironman tournament to catapult their seasons. Breeding & Co. hope to be no different.

“Going here is great,” he added. “It teaches you to not to get too high or low, and you know every match out there at this point is against a nationally ranked kid.

“Now going to the Beast of the East (next week), it’s another national tournament and we’ve already been there. You already know what level you need to be at this early and just need to focus on what we need to get better at. Hopefully at Beast we do a lot better.”

Burnett will get Elyria’s mindset back to where it needs to be.

“In the past, they’ve responded,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. Getting to the second day is always good, better than getting out in the first day. They beat some good guys along the way and so I think the key is, if you’re going to focus on a loss, you’ve got to focus on why the loss happened and how you can fix it. And if you get a good win, then focus on the good win and say, ‘Hey, I beat a good guy.’ A good win should build confidence, and a loss probably shouldn’t affect your confidence. As long as you fix what you did wrong.”