Elrod, Verba to face off in DIII district tournament today

Star Beacon, Ashtabula, Ohio
·2 min read

Mar. 6—The first night of district wrestling took place on Friday.

After tonight, wrestlers are hoping to be in the top four of their respective weight class and advance to next week's state tournament.

Divisions I and III Ashtabula County and Madison schools are at two different sites.

Lakeside and the Blue Streaks are at the Division I North Canton Hoover site, while Conneaut, Grand Valley, Jefferson, Pymatuning Valley and St. John are at Division III Garfield Heights.

DIVISION III

Five county wrestlers won their opening two matches on Friday night.

The group included Jefferson's Colt Edgar at 160 pounds, Pymatuning Valley's Tyler Bean at 170, Grand Valley's Chase Cottrell at 220 and PV's Victor Verba and St. John's Ryan Elrod at 285.

They will competed in the semifinals, and are all one win away from advancing to next week's state tournament.

Edgar pinned Wellington's Cayden Conrad 4:38 and Dalton's Lucas Oswald in 2:17.

Bean also earned a pair of pins. He pinned Wellsville's Logan Cunningham at 3:15 in the opening round and then pinned Columbia's Garrett Szuch at 5:45 to reach the semifinals.

Cottrell notched a 16-4 major decision over Berlin Center's Cameron Hartzell in his first match, then pinned Independencs's Ben Vitron at 2:48 in the next round.

Verba gained a pair of pins. He downed Rittman's Tyler Thompson in just 19 seconds and Columbiana Crestview's Wyatt Babik at the 2:51 mark.

After opening with a 6-2 decision over United's Dallas McCracken, Elrod pinned Mapleton's Joe Shoup in 48 seconds.

Verba and Elrod are scheduled to go against each other in one of today's semifinal matches. Other county wrestlers are still in contention with 1-1 marks.

DIVISION I

On the first night of action, Lakeside's Ethan Wannett opened with a 6-0 win over Boardman's Austin LaBelle at 138 pounds, but defaulted to Wadsworth's David Shue in the quarterfinals.

Madison's Jamie Harrison earned a 10-8 decision over Fitch's Alec Herman at 106 in the first round, then was pinned by Wadworth's Jaxon Joy in 3:26 during a quarterfinal match.