Ronnie Zander (285), Reece Thornton (220) and Tayt Leavitt (195) with their medals at the 2A Southern Region wrestling tournament. All three enter the state tournament this weekend at Virgin Valley High in Mesquite.
Reece Thornton and Tayt Leavitt both qualified as the No. 1 seeds from the 2A Southern Regional tournament at Laughlin last week to the state tournament this weekend at Virgin Valley High in Mesquite.
The top four finishers in each weight class advance to the state meet.
Seven of the nine wrestlers from the Panther team also qualified for state, helping Pahranagat Valley score 115 points to finish third behind Spring Mountain and Lincoln County in the team standings.
Hagen Harris (126), Shawn Twitchell (160) and Jacob Griffin (182) earned the No. 3 seed.
Jonathan Dillingham (170) and Ronnie Zander (285) earned the No. 4 seed.
Thornton (220) and Leavitt (195) won each of their matches by fall.
There were only two wrestlers in Leavitt’s weight class, so he only needed one match for the championship and pinned Bryan White of Lake Mead.
Thornton won his first and third matches in less than a minute over David Smith of Laughlin and Seth Patrick of Lincoln County. But he had to go late into the second period to get a pin over Adrian Carrillo of Spring Mountain in the semifinals.
Ben Hagfeldt (120) lost both his matches to Sean Mendiola of Lake Mead and Malachi Hopkins of Spring Mountain.
Harris (126) lost in the semifinals to Jordan Free of Lincoln, but won by injury default for third place against Tristan Gubler of White Pine.
William Gutierrez (132) lost his first match to Isaac Velderrain of Laughlin, received a bye in consolation round 1 and lost an 8-5 decision to Alex Liscio of Lincoln in the consolation semifinals. He then won fifth place by coming back to get a pin over Velderrain of Laughlin.
Shawn Twitchell (160) won his quarterfinal match over Christian Brunson of Lake Mead, lost the semifinal match to Jack Tierce of Laughlin, won the consolation semifinal over Blake Luna of Laughlin, then took third place with a pin over Brunson of Lake Mead.
Jonathan Dillingham (170) lost his first match to Montrell Smith of Spring Mountain, went 1-1 in the consolation rounds and took fifth place with a pin over Fernando Castano-Tejada of White Pine.
Dillingham was allowed to go to the state meet to fill in the eight-man bracket as there were only three competitors in the 2A Northern Region.
Jacob Griffin (182) won in the quarterfinals over Giselle Kimball of The Meadows, lost by fall to Nathanial Dolezal of White Pine in the semifinals, received a bye in the consolation semifinals and won the third place match by fall over Onuris Reed of Spring Mountain.
Ronnie Zander (285) lost his semifinal match to Isaiah Howard of Spring Mountain, received a bye in the consolation semifinal and lost by fall in the third place match to Tyler Benton of Laughlin.
Battle Mountain and Yerington were the top two teams at the Northern Regionals in Lovelock and will bring strong teams to the state meet this weekend.
Pershing County is the defending 2A state champion after stopping Battle Mountain’s string of six straight titles.
