Mexico at Blair Oaks Girls Tournament

On Wednesday evening, the Mexico Lady Bulldogs returned to a familiar venue of the Blair Oaks Girls tournament.

This tournament was the origin of the Lady Bulldogs as this was one of the few tournaments that was actually able to take place during the COVID-19 year five seasons ago. The reason they added this tournament back to the schedule was due to the fact that one of the events they were scheduled to attend earlier this year was canceled due to inclement weather.

The Blair Oaks girls tournament has grown in numbers so it no longer has to run co-currently with a boys event, and the district within the past few years has built a new school/gymnasium that was more than able to accommodate the teams in attendance. However, it is finals week for most of the schools in Missouri and so a quick and efficient tournament, not one that is drawn out late into the night was the order of the day and that was just what the Lady Bulldogs got.

Like any other tournament, there were some last-minute changes, cancellations, and bracket changes that caused an initial delay, but once things started, the tournament was running quickly. At times, it was hard for the coaches and the wrestlers to keep up as they would have three wrestlers on the mats simultaneously with at least another one or two on deck waiting to wrestle. This was a good experience for the young team as everyone on the roster was able to wrestle as this event is treated as an open. This was also a solid event for the Lady Bulldogs to build on some seeding criteria for the District 2 tournament in February.

Overall, the Lady Bulldogs finished in third as a team behind Moberly and Jefferson City (both who tied for first) with 40 team points. Due to the bracket sizes in some of the weight classes, several girls from Mexico (and other teams as well) were forced to wrestle teammates, which canceled out some of the scoring opportunities and slightly skewed the overall match records for the team. The Lady Bulldogs did win a total of 18 matches, with 17 of them by pin. Out of the 16 wrestlers competing for Mexico, eight of them walked out with a medal and a top 3 finish.

For most of the Lady Bulldogs, they would not get much time to recover and evaluate as they would travel down to Sedalia for the Battle of Katy Trail on Dec. 19-20.

Battle at Katy Trail

By the numbers:

Finals week ended for nearly everyone across the state, and the rounds of “holiday” tournaments began.

The Battle at Katy Trail featured 51 girls teams (with a total of 593 wrestlers), which represents the majority of the Class 1 teams throughout the state. The Battle of Katy Trail is seen as a preview of the state tournament for Class 1 teams for both the boys and the girls. In years past, many of those who won this event, would go on to win a state title and those who placed would also end up placing at state as well.

The Mexico Lady Bulldogs brought their biggest roster to date to this event and would eventually finish with some of their best marks in program history at this two-day tournament. As a team, they finished the weekend with ten pins out of a total of 12 individual match wins. They would score only 71 points though in a total of 31 completed matches.

Despite the low scoring affairs, nearly every single wrestler scored at least some team points on the weekend, bringing their total up to 80. With this amount, the Lady Bulldogs finished in a respectable 22nd place. If we use the team finishes as a projection for how the District 2 tournament is going to go, the Lady Bulldogs would finish in sixth or seventh place. Several of the Lady Bulldogs earned a few notches of seeding criteria.

The individual highlight of the tournament was senior Alexus Johns, who finished as runner-up a year ago at this event. She took a “take-no-prisoners” approach with five consecutive pins to win the 235 lb. weight class. She would need only eight minutes and eleven seconds of mat time to accomplish this.

Her toughest match of the weekend came during the semifinal round on Day 2 versus Gallatin. These two wrestlers have met a handful of times over the last three seasons, including at the state tournament. There were attempts made during the first period but neither wrestler was able to score. During the second period, it was very similar as the only points scored were an escape by the wrestler from Gallatin.

With that narrow 1-0 lead she became very defensive and cautious, frustrating Johns, who would give up a penalty point due to misconduct. Down 2-0 nothing entering the third period, Johns chose the top position to start but gave up another escape and another penalty point to be down 4-0 with only 90 seconds left in the match. With just over a minute left, Johns finally found an opportunity to score and she took full advantage, scoring a take down to close to within one point. However, she was not done, and forced her opponent to her back, pinning her opponent with 55 seconds left in the match to secure her come-from-behind win.

Up next for the Lady Bulldogs, the team does have a few days off for the holidays but will be competing twice before school resumes. They will be attending the Wonder Woman tournament in Columbia at Battle High School on Dec. 29-30 (Monday and Tuesday), which will feature at least 70 teams from both Class 1 and 2 in Missouri as well as several teams from neighboring states. The Lady Bulldogs will then have about a week to prepare for the last scheduled NCMC conference dual tournament on Monday, Jan. 5th at Moberly Area Community College in Moberly.