The Grind

The Southern Rams took the mats this weekend at the 2nd annual Grindstone Duals at Winters Mill High School in Westminster, MD.  When the dust settled on Saturday evening, the results were very similar to last season.  The Rams went 6-2 on the weekend, finished in 3rd place and were involved in a number of tight, exciting matches.

The first match on Friday afternoon was against Paint Branch High School in a rematch from one of the closest and most exciting contests from last year's tournament.  In 2015, everything came down to the end where the Rams pulled off a 37-34 victory.  This year's match was similar, hard-fought tough bouts and the outcome was not determined until the end where Southern ended up losing by a single point, 37-36.

After an 82-0 rout of Digital Harbor, we were set to face the defending champions from Leonardtown, Maryland.  This season's squad was just as tough as the 2015 team and they were just too much for us to handle in the final match of the evening.  The final score was Leonardtown 49 - Southern 28.

Joe Embleton scoring one of his 6 pins

There were five matches on the schedule for Saturday with the first against the host school, Winters Mill HS.  We had been looking forward to this rematch for an entire year after the Falcons upset us in last year's tournament.  We came out hot and made sure that there would be no upsets this season.  We quickly built a 27-3 lead and never looked back, dominating Winters Mill by the final score of 42-24. 

Up next for the Rams was last season's second place team, the Westminster Owls.  After our big win against Winters Mill, we started out flat and found ourselves down big, 36-9 with 5 bouts remaining.  We regrouped and did the math; we needed 4 pins and a major decision to pull off the bug comeback.  Evan Paugh, Brison Dixon and both Jake Sweitzers got us the 4 pins to bring the team score to 36-33 with only Nate Tasker's match remaining.  A regular decision would have tied the score but we needed bonus points to win the dual.  Nate worked hard from the beginning and ran the score up to 10-0 to clinch the victory for Southern.

Freshman Jake W Sweitzer is still unbeaten

Our sixth dual of the weekend was against Owings Mills and would also turn out to be a barn-burner.  The team score went back and forth with neither team leading by more than 5 points throughout.  As we reached the final bout, we held a 33-28 margin with Erik Fike taking the mat at 138.  He quickly found himself down 8-0 in the first period, but took control early in the second period and scored the fall to clinch the victory for the Rams, 39-28.

The final two matches of the tournament were less competitive.  We defeated Chesapeake 66-9 and finally Lackey 70-12 to close out our 6-2 weekend.

Individual Results

8-0  Brison Dixon (6 Pins)

8-0  Jake W Sweitzer (6 Pins)

7-1  Joe Embleton (6 Pins)

7-1  Jake E Sweitzer (2 Pins)

7-1  Nate Tasker (2 Pins)

5-3  Jace Guy (4 Pins)

5-3  Erik Fike (3 Pins)

5-3  Scotty Tichnell (3 Pins)

5-3  Cole Sweitzer (3 Pins)

4-4  Evan Paugh (3 Pins)

4-4  Alec Horner (3 Pins)

3-5  Patrick Duggan (1 Pin)

1-2  Brad Davis (1 Pin)

1-2  Jimmy Schwab

1-5  Nathan Sweitzer

0-1  Cole Baker

Big Cole with 5 wins this weekend

Team Results

Paint Branch 37 - Southern 36

Southern 82 - Digital Harbor 0

Leonardtown 49 - Southern 28

Southern 42 - Winters Mill 24

Southern 37 - Westminster 36

Southern 39 - Owings Mills 28

Southern 66 - Chesapeake 9

Southern 70 - Lackey 12