The good news is that several area competitors seem primed to meet that task, as several did individually and collectively.
Three individuals won titles in the Gold bracket of the tournament. Host Caprock had the best showing of any local team, finishing second in the points standings with 319 points, 21 behind team champion Lubbock-Cooper.
Caprock coach Chris Allen relishes the opportunity to compete against some of the best wrestlers near and far to measure where his own team stands.
“I think as it progresses it keeps getting tougher because early on you didn’t have girls who wrestled as long as these girls have,” Allen said. “A lot of these girls started wrestling at a young age at national and state level and there are a lot of good teams that came in from other states. It gets tougher every year. In a field like this with this many good teams, if you can finish top three here you finish the same at district, regionals and state.”
Zamora scored six pins to reach the championship match against Azle’s Noah Kovach, where she fell behind early before rallying for a decisive 12-4 win.
“The goal is always first and to come in and grab that,” Zamora said. “Usually I win by pin and I thought I had that in the last second of the second period but I ran out of time. As far as the finish, I thought it was pretty good.”
Zamora fell behind Kovach 3-1 in the first period, when she suffered from a nose bleed. She scored a point via escape and that seemed to propel her to a strong second period, where she scored a takedown to go up 8-4 and dominated the match from there.
“I still thought I was in good shape,” said Zamora of the early deficit. “I have a lot of faith in my coaches if I have a mishap and got taken down, I have a lot of faith in my ability and my coaches’ ability in getting back up there.”
There was going to be a guaranteed local winner in the 165 class, since a pair of Canyon ISD wrestlers squared off, with Randall’s Emma Heaton facing Keygan Grubb of West Plains. Heaton dominated from the start in rolling to a 10-2 majority decision victory. Like Zamora, Heaton dominated with a series of pins in the preliminary rounds before outpointing Grubb with a steady performance in the final.
“I definitely tried to work on my craft and try new things,” Heaton said. “I tried an arm spin and a backside fireman’s move to take ’em down. I need to get better on top and get back in shape. The Christmas break was long, but I feel pretty good about how I did but I need to work on some things.”
“Actually, it went a whole lot better than I thought it would,” Chavez said. “I thought I would be going on continuously that last round. I think it was because of an adrenaline rush. (McLearen) is my competition this year and she’s gotten a whole lot better. It thought it was going to last a whole lot longer, but she was just tired, everybody’s tired now.”
All those individual winners and their respective schools will return to Caprock on Feb. 2-3 as both boys and girls wrestlers compete in the District 3-5A tournament.
