Courtesy Photo
Pahranagat Valley’s Reece Thornton in the 170-pound finals at the 2A State wrestling tournament. Thornton took the silver medal.
Freshman Reece Thornton and junior Salvador Heredia won medals for Pahranagat Valley at the 2A State wrestling meet in Sparks over the weekend.
Thornton (170) placed second to Mason Chopp of Battle Mountain and Heredia was fourth, losing by pin to Pedro Maldinado of Yerington.
Battle Mountain had five individual champions and won the team title with 194 points to win their fifth consecutive team championship and 13th in the last 16 years.
Pershing County finished second with 154½ points, followed by Yerington with 80 points and Tonopah had 71. Lincoln County had 61½ points and Pahranagat Valley 40 points.
Lincoln County’s Zachary Rowe won the title at 132, and Tonopah’s Tanner Otteson was the champion at 145. Otteson beat White Pine’s Monte Moore, after Moore had beaten him in the 2A Southern Regionals the week before.
Derek Matthews of Lincoln took third place at 138.
Ben Culverwell of Lincoln, finished second at 106 pounds to Logan Gavin of Yerington. Culverwell was third place last year.
Rowe moved up from 126 pounds where he was the champion in 2016, to take the title this year at 132 pounds.
Other Pahranagat wrestlers who participated at state, but did not place were Thane Solario (170), Matthew Prince (120), Garrett Bowen (152), Tyler Horrocks (285) and Danny Heredia (160).
Thornton said he won his first two matches quickly, and almost had Chopp pinned a couple of times in the finals, “but I just ran out of gas at the end.”
Panther coach Brad Loveday said, “Reece had the lead much of the time, but had to expend so much energy in the second period, he just tired.”
He said Thornton is a special talent and he expects he will do very well in the next three years.
For the Panther team, Loveday said the kids, “Young as they are, came out really, really well. In the championship quarterfinals we won five of our seven matches, which was awesome, but we struggled in the semifinals with Thornton being the only one to advance. The consolation quarterfinal round was good for us, but tougher in the consolation semifinals with only Salvador (Heredia) advancing.”
In the future, Loveday expects to have a number of very good wrestlers. “We still won’t fill all the weights, but have a couple of really good lightweights coming in to go along with a whole bunch of middle to upper weights.” He expects to have a strong team in 2018.
