'cause I've got a golden ticket!

State Qualifiers from Hamilton - Cole and Brandt

Preferred ticket order forms


Three good matches today. Winning the first and 2nd and narrowly loosing the final championship match.
A bit frustrating for Cole because he feels he was the better wrestler. The guy just rode him for the 2nd and third round and never got called for stalling. A winner never likes to loose anything, ever. That's what gets them to the point of winning. To Cole, if the guy is better than you, know shame in loosing. Hey, he was better. But if he knows in his head and heart he was better and for a different application of the rules, ect.......



In the end? Whatever.

Going to State!!

Regionals tomorrow

Tomorrow is the Wrestling Regional finals, actually at home this time.
I've agreed to run a clock so time should pass quickly until I get a break and watch Cole Wrestle.

Michigan Grappler now has him ranked #5 in the state and predicts him to take first place!!
Hope it's not a jinx.

171

#5 Cole Van Harm (Hamilton) vs Dan Dykstra (Middleville TK)
#9 Chance Gorby (Allegan) vs Chase Challender (Charlotte)
#6 David McCormick (Forest Hills Northern) vs Wade Schlosser (Lowell)
#10 Derek Nietering (Coopersville) vs Blake Marsh (Eaton Rapids)

Outlook: All four placers from the Coopersville district should have a good chance to advance at this weight. After advancing from their tough district last week Van Harm, McCormick, Gorby and Nietering are all currently ranked top ten at their weight class. However Marsh and Challender are tough as well and should make this a very competitive weight class.

Predicted Finish: Van Harm, McCormick, Gorby, Marsh



Weds was team regionals but he faced two of the guys from tomorrow. The first was one he beat Saturday and the other was a strong, bulky guy predicted to take 3rd tomorrow.

Oh, he beat them both.


So, here's some action from Wed.

Borrowed shoes - District Championship

Individual Wrestling District Championships were yesterday. Big day for wrestlers. It's the first cut to their quest to qualify and wrestle at the State level, every wrestler's dream.

Cole's started off rather bumpily. Someone stole his wrestling shoes Friday night.

I got stressed calls from him on the team bus ride to the meet asking if his shoes were at home, they weren't. So I did some running around trying to find them amidst dropping off food for them to have after the onsite weigh-in. No luck. So we brought his beat up shoes as back ups just in time by start time.

Fortunatley there's another wrestler on the team with size 12's as well. It was a little dicey time-wise as he was only two weights below Cole but it all worked out.

Huge thanks to him for being generous enough to lend them to Cole.

Cole started off the day seeded in second place due to his record of 36-7 and 1st through 4th seed get a bye in the first round.

Well, you can see things went pretty well.

All three matches wins, beating the #6 and #5 ranked guys in the state and he is now seeded first going into Regionals which will be held at home Saturday. There were only two Regional champions from his team yesterday and 4 others qualified as well (1st through 4th moves on).

Now at Regionals there will only be 8 per weight class and the top four move on to State. Needs to win at least two matches.

One step closer.....

these are the only vids I could upload as the rest were over 100mgs and blogger didn't like them

His second opponent had a rough day. Coming in he was seeded 4th but came in not feeling too well for the day. He and Cole have met before so it was anticipated to be a hot match.

But Cole said he himself was in the zone and really slicing time (thanks Mushtaq) and it was as if he could see everything in slowed motion.

Right after this one the opponent ran off to grab the garbage can (he did come back and wrestle well in his consolation 3rd place match so he recovered fine)

Quick feet, no?

He'd met his finals opponent earlier in the year and lost to 2-1. This time he came back very aggressivly and hooked up hard.

Cole was down 3-0 as a result when he stuck this reversal and wicked neck crank to go up 5-3.

Then kept that pace to end the match winning 8-6 - District Champion.

20sec pin

Team district action last night.

Hamilton defeated Holland soundly and then Zeeland East to become division 2 district team champions.

Cole had the fastest pin of the night, 20seconds.

Conference Champions

Saturday was the individual Conference championship. Points earned individually also add up to an overall team conference score. The hawkeyes have defeated every team in the conference dual meets but if one other team won the individual conference meet on individual points, it would be a co-championship. That's what happened last year.

But not this year.





The team pulled it out again and defeated the 2nd ranked team by one final team point, 241 to 240.

Cole also had no problem winning individual Conference at 171. He defeated all three of his oponents in the first round, by pin at an average elapsed time of one minute.

Record 34 and 7

nother tournament

Another saturday tournament down.
12+ hours makes for a long day, specially when it's 9-5 in a bleacher.
Cole had yet another great day, going undeafeated again.
That's three undefeated tournaments out of four in January, his only loss to a Division 1 ranked team.
So the current record of wins-losses is 31-7, 21-1 in January.
One more Quad on Wednesday and then it's conference action next Saturday for which he should be seeded in first place.
Great to see him having such a great senior season.

nice article from last Saturday too.

http://allegannews.com/articles/2011/01/27/sports/4.txt

HOPKINS—Records are made to be broken and on Saturday, Jan. 22, Jake Arndt of Hopkins set a school record that he hopes is broken.

“My hope and desire is for someone else to break my record,” said the modest Arndt, who set the mark for most career wins in Hopkins. “That’s what records are all about.”

Arndt, who wrestled at 152 and 160 pounds, would like to see the Vikings’ wrestling program make some noise at the state level.

“We’re getting better and better,” Arndt said. “I would love to see wrestling become an elite program at our school like football.”

The Vikings, who finished a close second to Hamilton at their own invitational, are making great strides. “They’ve really gotten a lot better,” said veteran Hawkeyes’ coach Gregg Stoel. “(Hopkins coach) Joel (Eding) has done a great job with that program. We feel fortunate to get out of here with a win.”

Hamilton went 5-0 at the daylong tournament.


The Hawkeyes opened the invite with a 69-6 shellacking of Whitehall. They followed that with a 35-24 win over Edwardsburg, a 63-14 pasting of East Kentwood’s B team and a 40-28 victory over Three Rivers.

The Hawkeyes’ toughest match was a 36-30 decision over the Vikings in round 3.

“I thought we might get them,” Eding said. “We had a great shot.”

Eding was extra fired up for the bout.

“Joel really wanted it,” said his wife, Denise. “He didn’t eat when he left home this morning.”

Eding could almost taste his first triumph against his alma mater.



“This was the closest we’ve come to beating these guys,” Eding said. “A match here or there could have been the difference.”

Another factor might have been the coin toss.

“Winning the coin toss is always very important,” Stoel said. “For me it usually comes down to a match against a certain kid. They got what they wanted when they put up (Elijah) Mack against Cole VanHarn (in the final match).”

Hopkins laid all of its marbles on the floor when they sent out the muscular Mack against the equally well-built VanHarn at 171 pounds. VanHarn ended up winning arguably the day’s most exciting match with so much at stake, 3-1.“That was a great match,” Eding said. “It was a match that could have gone either way.”

This was the fifth time this season that VanHarn, who is ranked 10th in the state, has won a match in the last five seconds.

“I would much rather get it over as quickly as possible,” VanHarn said. “Winning at the end like that is not something I plan on.”Also going 5-0 on the day for the Hawkeyes besides VanHarn were Collin Welcher (103 pounds), Brandt Welcher (130) and Joey Cullen (152).



“We knew this would be a tough tournament,” Stoel said. “We wrestled very well against some very good teams.”

Hopkins’ four team wins came over Three Rivers (48-21), Whitehall (65-18), Edwardsburg (41-31) and East Kentwood’s B unit (66-14).

“This was a fun day,” Arndt said. “It was fun to wrestle five matches.”

Several teams in the past have voided against Arndt, who raised his season record to a perfect 32-0. He has now won 141 career matches and broke Kinion Mack’s previous school mark of 137.

“I’m happy for Jake,” said the classy Mack, working at one of the tables. “He’s a good wrestler, who has good techniques.”

Stoel also had special words for Arndt.

“He’s a very solid wrestler,” Stoel said. “It’s easy to see he has worked hard to get to where he’s at.”

Arndt has another big goal in mind for himself and for the Vikings before the season comes to a close.

“I’d really like to see us win district,” Arndt said. “I believe we have the team to do it.”

Hopkins will host districts Thursday, Feb. 10.

“Ironically, Otsego, the team we last defeated for our lone district championship, is in our district along with Fennville,” Eding said.

Also finishing with 5-0 unbeaten marks for Hopkins along with Arndt were Kyle Cooper (215), Jimmy Renberg (145) and Paul Weber (119-125).

Jack LaLanne - RIP

Simply put, We're not worthy



•LaLanne's last public stunt was in 1994, when he celebrated his 80th birthday by getting handcuffed and shackled in order to fight strong winds and currents and swim 1.5 miles while towing 80 boats with 80 people from the Queensway Bay Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary.