The tournament began on Friday and after the quarterfinals three Knights found themselves in Saturday morning semifinals, Craig Bowyer at 120 pounds, Chase Cuddy at 126 and Hunter Forbes at 160. Friday rounds of tough competition ended the championship path for the other wrestlers.
The wrestlers who made it to the quarter-final round found themselves a guaranteed eighth place finish in the tournament and Xaiden Wynn and Wesley Ferguson secured the top eight placement medal with those wins, moving them into the quarter-finals. They still wrestled to advance towards a third place finish but were guaranteed an eighth place finish at a minimum. The wrestlers who lost prior to the quarter-finals had the tough task of wrestling back to secure a placement. Brayden Forbes, Chris Wenk, and Michael Jorgenson fell short of that goal and were eliminated from the tournament on Saturday.
After Saturday’s semi-final round was complete, James River had two finalists with Bowyer and Cuddy making the championship finals in their respective weight classes. Forbes fell short of a finals match chance with a highly contested match, dropping him to the consolation semifinals match and allowing him to wrestle towards a third/fourth place finish. Wynn wrestled the long haul and fought his way back into the third/fourth place bout as well as Ferguson wrestled his way into the seventh/eighth place bout.
Cuddy came away from the tournament as the sole 2022 Ed Cressel Classic Champion in the 126-pound weight class with a 10-5 decision over Dalton Minnich of Abingdon High School. The tournament concluded with Bowyer finishing with a second place runner-up finish, losing to Gavin Armstrong of Dobyns-Bennet High School in Tennessee. Forbes secured a third place finish with a 5-1 decision over a wrestler from David Crockett High School in Tennessee in the 160-pound class. Wynn finished in fourth place, losing to Tazewell’s Talan Hall in the 106-pound class, and Ferguson finished in 8th place in the 145-pound class with a loss to Keith Ankers from Tennessee High School.
“Overall, we had a good performance,” said River coach Bobby Stewart. “It was exciting to see Craig and Chase make the finals, especially for Bowyer. Craig has only been wrestling three years, so to have a senior making the accomplishments he has in the short three-year wrestling career is exciting to watch.
“Chase Cuddy is where he needs to be. He is a well-rounded wrestler with a goal in mind. We will continue to work on our conditioning and trimming the fat on our performances. We still have improvements to make.”
River will be back on the mats this weekend for the Big Blue Classic in Christiansburg. Wrestling will begin at 3:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon and pick back up at 10 a.m. Saturday. Championship finals are tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. Saturday.
