What a busy and successful holiday season we had!!  My original plan was to update each individual event that we attended, however parties with family and friends along with our active wrestling schedule left me a little short of time.  With that said, I am going to recap all the wrestling events that we attended over the holiday break.

59th Oakland County Championships    

We kicked off the holiday schedule with the 59th Annual Oakland County Championships.  This is one of the biggest individual tournaments in the state next to the MHSAA state finals.  We took 11 of our wrestlers to participate in the 2-day event. Last year we advanced 2 wrestlers to the 2nd day championship round and this year we doubled it to 4 wrestlers.  Of the 4 advancing to day 2, we had 2 wrestlers medal and make All County.  Thaddeus Swanigan placed 6th in the 103# weight class and Matthew Cepak grabbed the 8th place spot in the 189# weight class.  Overall East finished 24th out of 37 teams competing at the event.

Salem ELKS JV Tournament

While some of our wrestlers were battling it out at Oakland County, we took a few other wrestlers to the Salem JV ELKS Tournament.  Don’t let the name of this tournament fool you! This tournament is full of some high-level competition and our wrestlers put it all out on the mat.  For some it was their first experience with an individual tournament. Michael Pepper ended up the Champion of the consolation round capping off his last 2 wins with Tech Falls!

Salem ELKS Varsity Tournament

Our third tournament during the holiday season found us back at Salem to compete at the ELKS Varsity tournament.  This is another tough tournament that brings in many regional and state ranked wrestlers. As a team we ended up placing 16th out of 27 teams and were able to put 2 of our wrestlers on the podium.  Matthew Cepak 171# and Griffin Schaeffer 215# both secured the 3rd place spot at this historically competitive tournament.

Spartan Classic Wrestling Varsity Team Tournament

Capping off our holiday wrestling series we traveled to Livonia Stevenson High School for the annual Spartan Classic Team tournament. Due to injuries and voided weight classes we entered this tournament with an automatic 30-point deficit. During the initial pool round of competition, we faced Livonia Stevenson and Utica High School.  We battled Livonia first and lost, however were very competitive losing only 36-24 in direct head to head matches. The next round we faced Utica HS whom we defeated, placing us #2 in our pool and advancing us into the championship bracket. In the first round of the Championship bracket we faced a very tough Dearborn Crestwood team that defeated us.  Second round brought us face to face with a Lakes Valley Conference team, Waterford Mott. We handily defeated them only giving up 14 points in head to head matches. This placed us in the 5th/6th placed match versus a tough U of D Jesuit team that beat us out, placing us 6th overall from a 12-team tournament.