{"id":55129,"date":"2019-11-05T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/falcons-make-statement-in-ketchikan-meet\/"},"modified":"2019-11-05T12:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T21:30:00","slug":"falcons-make-statement-in-ketchikan-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/falcons-make-statement-in-ketchikan-meet\/","title":{"rendered":"Falcons make statement in Ketchikan meet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

The Thunder Mountain High School wrestling team has a goal to beat Ketchikan at the Region V Wrestling Championships next month in Craig.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

That’s been the goal for a number of years, according to Falcons coach Josh Houston, but this year it’s more attainable than in the past.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“It’s always the goal,but I think we’re in a better position to do that this year,” Houston said in an interview on Tuesday. The Ketchikan Kings have won the last 11 region crowns.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

The TMHS wrestling team took on their rival Kings — and 10 other teams — on Friday and Saturday at the Bill Weiss Invitational in Ketchikan. The Falcons finished third with 116 points despite being shorthanded with less than half of the team in action.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

The Falcons are 25-deep this season, Houston said, but because of eligibility requirements and other factors, only brought eight to Ketchikan.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“We brought a very small team but we had actually quite a bit of success over there for the amount of kids we brought,” Houston said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Ketchikan got first in the meet with 201 points and Glennallen was second with 154 points.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Four Falcons, including Carson Cummins (103), Kadin Messmer (112), Nick Tipton (189) and Camden Erickson (215) recorded first-place showings.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Tipton’s title in the 189-pound bracket was especially impressive, according to Houston, because he twice defeated one of the state’s best in Glennallen’s Kael Gerlach. The Glennallen talent is coming off a runner-up finish at the state meet.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“That was a huge win for Nick,” Houston said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Tipton, one of the team captains along with Erickson, is one of four seniors wrestling for Thunder Mountain this year. The others are Chase Foster, Jahrease Mays and Mauricio Hernandez.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

TMHS heads to the Lancer Smith Memorial in Wasilla next weekend.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\"Thunder<\/a>

Thunder Mountain High School’s Kadin Messmer is named the 112-pound champion of the Bill Weiss Invitational after defeating Sitka High School’s Colton Ewers via pin at Ketchikan High School on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (Dustin Safranek | Ketchikan Daily News)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

<\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They’ve got their eye on the Kings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":55130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-55129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55129"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=55129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}