Eagle News: Eagles Wrestlers Don't Give Up: Sinsheimer and Burge Ignite Team

The Independence Eagle’s Wrestling team was in action this past Saturday at the Tullahoma Dual Tournament. With thirteen teams from Tennessee and Alabama, the Eagles were able to come back to Independence with a first place finish. The Eagles first match was against Fort Payne High School out of Alabama. Chris Sinsheimer was selected to start the match and came out with a fire and pinned his opponent in the first period and set a tone for the entire day. Our eagles dominated Fort Payne with a strong performance and won by a score of 64-13.

The next opponent for IHS was Tullahoma High School, a preseason top ten team. Taylor Dixon started the match off right with a quick fall of his opponent, but Tullahoma came storming back. At the halfway point of the dual, Tullahoma was ahead 23-12 and had won five of the first seven matches. With seven matches remaining, our Eagles only allowed Tullahoma to win one. The final score of the match was Independence 40 Tullahoma 29.

After defeating Tullahoma in the final match of their pool portion of the tournament, the Eagles were matched up against Grissom High School (Alabama) in the Semifinals. After falling behind 15-0, the eagles got the score back to 18-19 by the halfway point of the match. From there we were again able to win the next four matches and secure the win with three matches remaining. With the three matches left and the score out of reach, we forfeited the final three weight classes so that we could rest our warriors for the finals. Final match score was Independence 38 Grissom 37.

In the finals was a team that Independence was all too familiar with, Overton High School. With a regional opponent waiting that had beaten us back in November, 31-35, we wanted a little revenge. Dalton Burge started the match for the Eagles and although he was defeated in triple overtime the team seen his determination and wanted to duplicate his effort. After the first three matches of the dual, Overton was ahead 13-0. Chase Beazley was up next and got the team out of an early whole defeating his opponent 16-7. Chase was able to ignite the team and with his win we were able to start a streak that produced six unanswered wins. With the match score Indy 23 Overton 13 and five matches left, Chris Sinsheimer stepped onto the mat. Chris’s opponent was ranked 4^th in the state and almost everyone expected Overton to win this match. Chris did not care about the ranking; he only cared about winning the match for his team and dominated his opponent by a final score of 5-1. With four matches remaining the eagles knew that if Taylor Dixon pinned his next opponent, it was impossible for Overton to win the match. Taylor did exactly that and pinned his opponent quickly and the celebration began. With three matches remaining, the eagles forfeited (took a knee) the remaining matches and won by a score of 32-31.

I could not have been any more excited for these kids. They wrestled their hearts out Saturday and wish everyone could have seen the chemistry we had as an entire team. We are an entirely different team with our boys from the football team on the mat. You can clearly see that it was special weekend in the attached picture and I only hope we can duplicate this success later in the season. January 8^th is going to be a special match for our team as we host Franklin at home. Everyone please come out and cheer us on as we defeat Franklin for the first time is school history.

Below is a list of the student athletes that went with this weekend and ended the semester on a memorable note. (Bold wrestlers were undefeated on the weekend)

103 – Ernie Overton (1-3)

112 – Austin Heithcock (1-3)

119 – Chase Beazley (4-0)

125 – Jacob Twaddle (3-1)

125 – Kevin Bratt

130 – Gustavo Quintero (3-1)

130 – Bryson Keeter

135 – Austin Cox (4-0)

140 – Matt Gabriel (3-0)

140 – Seth Seneca (1-0)

145 – Brennen Cox (4-0)

152 – Chris Sinsheimer (4-0)

160 – Taylor Dixon (3-0)

171 – Christian Tambellini (2-0)

189 – Will Cox (1-2)

215 – Graham Sawyer (0-3)

Hwt – Dalton Burge (1-3)

Overall Team record: 11-3

Cool Stats:

Matt Gabriel: 103:2 takedown ratio, simply amazing, I have never seen anything like it before. Also has nine tech falls (winning by 15+ points)
Chase Beazley: 17-0 record.
Jacob Twaddle, Taylor Dixon, Chase Beazley: all have 10 pin falls on the year.
Overall Individual Record: 140-72