Ganado wrestling team places fourth at Mogollon

HEBER, Ariz.

For the second time this season the Ganado wrestling squad took home a team trophy.

In early December the Hornets won the Peabody Classic and on Saturday they finished fourth at the always tough Mogollon wrestling tournament. Ganado filled 10 of the 14 weight classes and had nine wrestlers place in their respective division.

“Overall we feel real good about what we did this weekend,” Ganado coach Jim Dowse said. “We had a pretty good showing as a team.”

The Hornets finished the 20-team tournament with 136.50 points with eight of those wrestlers taking part of the team score.

“We had a couple of kids wrestling in the same weight class so we had to dictate who was going to score because they both couldn’t score for us,” Dowse said.

In two cases, the Hornets had Morgana Denny and Tristen Benallie both place as nonscoring members.”

Benallie finished fifth in the 195-pound class while Denny placed sixth in the lightweights at 106.

“That’s pretty cool for them to come in and place as our backup,” Dowse said.

Veteran wrestler Trent Peterson led the Hornets as the senior made the finals in the 220-pound category and finished second to Perrin Maakestad of Benson High School.

“I wanted to repeat as champion but he was faster than me,” Peterson said of Maakestad, who was last year’s Division IV state runner-up.

Dowse said his team will see a lot of wrestlers like Maakestad at next week’s Arizona state wrestling meet as the top four finishers from this weekend’s sectional tournament will qualify for state.

“It’s going to be tough,” Dowse said of the Division IV, Section I tournament, which is being hosted by Winslow on Saturday. “Our section got beefed up with Winslow, Monument Valley and St. Johns so the bar has been raised and we have to be ready for that.”

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