And Lebanon didn’t disappoint the curious onlookers, wrestlers and coaches who showed up for the eight-team dual-meet format tournament hosted by the Hawks. The Yellowjackets won all five dual meets, including the tournament championship against Northwest with a 39-27 victory.
In my column on Jan. 9, I wrote about how the Wall Street Journal published an article about how girls wrestling was a rising tide that was lifting boys in the sport from dwindling numbers. The newspaper visited Lebanon and talked to their coaches and wrestlers for the story.
Lebanon sophomore Quincey Glendenning was the only member of the Yellowjackets to win an individual state title last season. She won all five of her matches at Hillsboro at 130 pounds. Her quickest match was a pin in 14 seconds.
Glendenning stopped at the McDonald’s on her way out of Hillsboro.
“I’ve been wrestling for years so I was ready when the girls got their own state tournament,” she said.
A lot of girls who are joining the sport are doing it for the reason many participate in high school sports: A college scholarship. But Glendennig said that’s not her goal. She also plays basketball during the winter. When she graduates though, she said she’s not interested in competing in either sport in college.
There are numerous prep athletes who compete in different sports in the same season – like softball and volleyball for girls, soccer and football for boys in the fall – but Glendenning is the first athlete I’ve talked to who does multiple winter sports.
“We have an agreement with the basketball coaches,” Lebanon girls wrestling coach Matt Neely said. “Last year was rough. (Glendenning) didn’t get a lot of matches before state. As crazy as it sounds between the parents and coaches, I don’t know how she does it.”
Neely said Lebanon’s girls team rose from 16 to 20 wrestlers. Like
De Soto and Hillsboro, Lebanon has a youth program to train wrestlers. Neely said he agreed with the gist of the Wall Street Journal article.
“In Missouri, the boys’ numbers were dropping,” he said. “If we don’t have boys and girls wrestling, like basketball has both sexes, wrestling will go away. There was talk about taking wrestling out of the Olympics. If wrestling isn’t in the Olympics, you won’t get a lot of kids to do it. They’ll go to things that later in life will get them places.”
Neely wasn’t interviewed by the paper and when he was told the Yellowjackets were going to be featured, he was a bit skeptical.
“I didn’t believe them until I saw the article,” he said. “I thought it was a joke. Then I saw it, and thought, ‘Oh well, they weren’t kidding.’”
Northwest’s girls have the numbers to fill all 12 weight classes and the Lions are one of the top girls teams in the St. Louis area. The Lions won five of the 12 matches against the Yellowjackets. Taylor Murphey (135), Kiegan Newhouse (168), Olivia Buckley (187), Lauren MacMiller (103) and Julian Ems (110) won their matches against Lebanon.
“We took second behind the defending state champs but other than that we ran through the competition,” Northwest head coach Ron Wilhelm said.
“We knew they were tough. We saw them at Wonder Woman (a tournament in Columbia) and at the Kansas City Stampede,” Neely said of the Lions. “We didn’t do anything special to prepare for them. We knew we’d have to be on our ‘A’ game to beat them.”
Since Lebanon is the defending state champs, Neely said the team profile has the attention of coaches around the state. Finishing first in the first year of anything will do that.
“When you’re at the top of the food chain, you have to be selective to the tournaments that give your team the best competition,” he said.
Neely agreed with the wrestling coaches from the area I’ve spoken with about the future of the sport. If there’s another 40 percent increase in participation next school year, the girls will have to be broken up into two classes at the state meet.
“You’ll see skill levels jump and teams will get bigger and bigger,” Neely said. “Some teams with five or six girls now will have a full varsity.”
De Soto finished third at the Hillsboro duals. Returning state champion Jaycee Foeller (167) was 5-0 at 166 pounds. Foeller pinned Lebanon’s Bailey Shockley in 59 seconds. Foeller has won every match by fall and hasn’t wrestled a full six minutes this year. Her toughest match at Hillsboro went to the third period before she pinned Kirkwood’s Emma Schreiber, who was fourth in the state at 152 last season.
Matt Mitchell was the last person to leave Hillsboro on Saturday. The school’s first girls dual tournament ran so smoothly, the coaches I talked to couldn’t believe it was finished by 2 p.m. after a 9 a.m. start.
Always calm and affable, Mitchell said the girls tournament had a different vibe than tournaments for the boys.
“A lot of the teams today had eight or nine girls,” Mitchell said. “Lebanon and Northwest had full squads. Our girls all got five matches. That’s as many as you can get in one day. It was cool to host a girls tournament. The coaches liked the format we had set up.”
Lebanon senior Ashlynn Leochner was selected by the coaches as the tournament’s outstanding wrestler. Leochner won all of her matches at 115 pounds. She was fourth in the state at 116 last season.