{"id":59135,"date":"2020-03-13T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/they-are-the-champions-2-juneau-wrestlers-win-at-middle-school-state\/"},"modified":"2020-03-13T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:00:00","slug":"they-are-the-champions-2-juneau-wrestlers-win-at-middle-school-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/they-are-the-champions-2-juneau-wrestlers-win-at-middle-school-state\/","title":{"rendered":"They are the champions: 2 Juneau wrestlers win at middle school state"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than half of the 17 Juneau wrestlers who competed at the Middle School State Championships in Fairbanks brought home medals or won championships. <\/p>\n

Two of those wrestlers, Thomas Baxter and Evelyn Richards won their respective divisions and are state champions. Baxter won the 174-pound bracket and Richards won the 136-pound girls bracket.<\/p>\n

“It was a good showing by us,” said Juneau Youth Wrestling Club coach Loren Cummins in a phone interview.<\/p>\n

The 45th annual tournament attracted more than 40 teams and 550 participants, he said.<\/p>\n

“Some of the teams bring 35 or 45 kids there, and we only had 17,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n

[Hoops hotshot takes her talents to Malibu<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n

In addition to Richards and Baxter, other finalists from Southeast Alaska included Jonas Baekklund from Petersburg, who won the 160-pound bracket, and Colton Cummins, who placed second in the 77-pound bracket. Eli Harvey, Hayden Aube, Sage Schultz, Eric Tipton, Brycen McKubbin and Jayden Johnson were all medalists as well, Cummins said.<\/p>\n

He praised the performance of both champions from Juneau.<\/p>\n

“Thomas is a fantastic athlete,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n

Richards’ win makes her the first-ever girl state champion from the capital city, Cummins said.<\/p>\n

“She wasn’t even the top-seeded wrestler, but she was just totally dominant there,” Cummins said.<\/p>\n

• Contact reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenHohenstatt<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several others earned medals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":59136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-59135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59135","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\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59135"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=59135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}