Valley wrestlers dominate state meet

ANCHORAGE — The Colony Knights weren’t the only Valley team to take home hardware at the ASAA/First National Bank State Wrestling Tournament at the Alaska Airlines Center on December 21.

Though the Knights took home the Division I award as a team and two individual awards, both Palmer and Wasilla finished in the top 10 for team standings. Palmer finished in 4th place with 137 points and Wasilla finished 6th with 130.5 points. Wasilla placed half a dozen wrestlers in the top 6 in their weight classes. Alexander Logsdon finished his stellar season with a record of 33-5, finishing 2nd place to Aedyn Concepcion of South Anchorage at 119 lbs. The Warriors had two top 5 finishers at 145 lbs with Deshawn Campbell finishing his season 23-9 over Palmer’s Jayden Christianson with a 10-4 decision for fifth place. Also at 145 lbs for the Warriors, Sterling Uhlenhake finished his season 28-4 with a third place finish. The top Valley finisher not wearing green was Wasilla’s Colton Lindquist who won the state title at 171 lbs.

“I’m so happy,” said Lindquist. “The beginning, when I went in I knew it was going to be a good match, I just didn’t know I was going to be up that quick so I just kept my mind in it and said I’m still up, I’m still up, I can still do this, so I just kept going.”

Lindquist defeated his opponent, Soldotna’s Sean Babbitt at the Lancer Smith Memorial Tournament earlier in the season, but just a week prior to the state tournament, Lindquist lost the region title to Babbitt.

“He changed the way that he attacked on his feet and followed through on his shots instead of stopping,” said Warrior wrestling coach Shawn Hayes. “Those two have been going at it.”

Hayes congratulated an exhausted Lindquist as he left the mat victorious, exclaiming that he had done it with style.

“A lot of my coaching, they looked at the videos. We looked over it a million times, all we could figure out that he does cradles and he’s very strong so we worked on that, we worked on how to break him down so we could make him tired. I think that just won the match for me,” said Lindquist.

Sam Logsdon finished 6th for the Warriors at 135 lbs with a loss to Owen Manley of Palmer, and Niles Williams took fourth place at 140 lbs. Palmer placed eight wrestlers on the final day of competition. Garrett Blydenburgh earned a 2-0 decision over Kayden Payne of Colony for 3rd place at 130 lbs.

Blydenburgh was joined by Payton Portnoy who also finished 3rd for the Moose with a win over Rett Gallager of Colony at 135 lbs.

Jackson Acree at 171 lbs and Antonio Woodfork at 152 lbs also defeated Colony opponents on their way to third place finishes at the state tournament. Ethan Bleakney took 4th place after he was defeated by Camryn Binning of Colony and Tyler Linder took 6th place at 285 lbs.