State draw favors Ganado wrestler

Posted by Quentin Jodie | Feb 15, 2024 | Wrestling |

WINDOW ROCK – The road to the state finals looks promising for Ganado wrestler Ryan Kee.

The three-time state qualifier has a first-round bye and will need just two wins to make the championship round of the Division IV 106-pound weight class.

“I’m looking for Ryan to be in the top two,” Ganado coach Kevin Watchman said.

Last week Kee improved his record to 33-7 overall after he was crowned the sectional champion, winning his final match with an 11-3 major decision over Page’s Kaiden Benally.

With that the Ganado senior was seeded third in this year’s state tournament bracket, which gets underway on Thursday at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

Kee will await the winner between freshmen wrestlers Kaige Geyer of River Valley and Adam Belloc of Santa Cruz Valley Union in the second round.

If he wins that match, Kee could possibly wrestle second seed Wyatt Eddy of Tombstone High for the first time in the semifinals. Eddy enters the state tournament with a 51-2 mark.

“Ryan is the only senior on his side of the bracket and the rest are underclassmen,” Watchman said.

The Ganado coach also likes the chances of 113-pounder Cimmaron Curley, who came up short to Holbrook’s Everett Pack during last week’s sectional meet.

Pack defeated Curley for the first time in three tries with a 13-8 decision. Earlier in the season, the Ganado wrestler pinned Pack at the Pat Kenny Invitational and at a multi-dual meet in St. Johns.

“I think Cimmaron has a good chance of medaling at state,” Watchman said. “His first-round match is against a younger wrestler.”

That wrestler is Parker’s Michael Evenson, who sports a 23-23 record. In the next round, Curley could possibly face second seed Avry Dunton of Arizona Lutheran as Dunton ran his record to 47-4 after winning his sectional meet.

Watchman will be also coaching two wrestlers on the girls team, with seniors Dosha Wortham qualifying at 107 and Lyndsey Thomas at 132.

Wortham (26-9 overall) took third at sections while Thomas (28-6) finished second, losing to Winslow’s Tatum Estrada in the finals by a 5-2 decision. Estrada earned the top seed in the 132-pound bracket as she owns a perfect 20-0 record.

“Lyndsay is getting close to beating Tatum,” Watchman said. “All of their matches have come down to the last period, but it’s never been in our favor.”

Since her loss to Estrada, the Ganado wrestler has been working on improving her defensive mechanics.

“We’ve been working with Lyndsay with counter attacks because that is how Tatum wrestles,” Watchman said. “She capitalizes off Lyndsay’s mistakes, so our game plan this week is to play defense and counter off what the other wrestlers are doing.

“We’re training to not take unnecessary shots and we’re training not to be as aggressive as we have been,” he added. “We’re going to try to be defensive-minded and maybe this time around it will work in our favor.”