WICHITA, Kan. — With two of the best teams in the state on a collision course in the Greater Wichita Athletic League, the dual between 6A top-ranked Wichita Heights and 5A No. 4 Kapaun Mt. Carmel had enourmous league implications.

And although both teams entered 5-0 in City League duals, only Heights remained undefeated after a 41-28 win at Kapaun.

“A lot of people said that this match was a coin toss,” said Heights head coach Mike Church. “It just happened to be a coin with two Falcons on it.”

Kapaun controlled the lower weights, building a 13-3 lead, but when the Falcons got to the middle weights and what Church called, “murderer’s row,” Heights was too much for the Crusaders to deal with.

By the time the 215-pound match came along, Heights had built an insurmountable 35-22 lead on its way to the victory.

And while the Falcons now sit in the driver’s seat, Church is not quite ready to celebrate.

“I’m not going to call us the City League champs until we’ve beaten Carroll and we’ve beaten North,” said Church. “You just never know with high school athletes what is going to happen.”

In the lower weights, Greg Jones gave the Falcons their only win of the first four matches with a takedown at the buzzer to score 2 points and get a 6-5 victory over Paul Suhr at 112 pounds. Jones, the No. 4 wrestler in 6A picked up his second caution giving Suhr, the 5A No. 5, a point and a 2-point lead late in the match.

“I just thought it was over,” said Jones about his prospects after giving a point to Suhr. “I had to have more heart than him.”

In the waning seconds of the match, Jones escaped to pick up a point, and left just enough time to take Suhr down to get the win.

The win for Jones was only one of two Heights wins that didn’t come by fall or technical fall. The Falcons picked up five wins by fall, and one tech fall, earning Heights 17 bonus points in a 13-point margin of victory.

“We knew, to win, we were going to have to get falls,” said Church. “We believed that the dual was going to be seven wins on each side and whoever got the most pins wins.”

Parker Howell got Kapaun off on the right foot as the 103-pounder opened with a second period pin over Kody Reed to put the Crusaders up 6-0 right off the bat.

Jones’ win at 112 put Heights on the board before Kapaun got the ball rolling at 119 and 125 pounds.

At 119, Tyler Dryden from Kapaun battled Conner Neal to a 6-2 decision. Lukas Maki gave the Crusaders a bonus point with an 18-5 major decision over Barry Newton at 125 pounds to put Kapaun up 13-3 early.

Kapaun won three out of the first four matches, but Church was pleased with Neal and Newton for not allowing themselves to be pinned, avoiding crucial bonus points. And when Heights had the opportunities, the Falcons did not leave any points on the mat.

Starting with Daniel Deshazer at 130 pounds, the Falcons needed only two wins in a row to erase the Kapaun lead. Deshazer wasted no time, pinning Matt Friling in the first period to give Heights 6 points, and Jessie Hill gave Heights 6 more, pinning Christian Williams at 135 pounds.

After the Hill win, Heights took the lead at 15-13.

140-pound Trey Schrimscher made it three wins in a row for the Falcons with an 11-4 decision over Alex Mills. Schrimscher won, but could not find a way to get a late takedown to get a major decision.

After the 140-pound win for Heights, the Falcons took a short-lived 18-13 lead.

The lead vanished in the 145-pound match, when Tyler Dulaney wrestled through the pain of a banged up shoulder to pin Steve Nguyen. The Dulaney 6-point win put the Crusaders up 19-18. It was the last lead Kapaun had.

Heights picked up a quick 12 points with back-to-back pins from Uylesses Deshazer and Matt Reed. Deshazer flipped Alex Schutz and pinned him at 152 pounds and Reed followed it up with a pin against Drew McDonough at 160.

Dylan Penka stepped up for Kapaun at 171 pounds, beating Dominique Henderson in a 7-2 decision to stop the bleeding and get the Crusaders back in the dual.

But with a 30-22 lead and three matches to go, Heights picked up 11 points by winning two of the last three. Heights’ Hunter Jameson stopped the 189-pound match early with a tech fall over Nick Heiland to seal the win for the Falcons.

Luke Bean gave the home Kapaun fans something to cheer about at 215 pounds by pinning Justin Reynolds, but Khary Jones returned the favor, pinning Kapaun’s Roc Cyphert at 285 pounds to end the dual.

“This dual was everything City League wrestling should be,” said Church. “It had great matches on both sides, a lot of emotion, a lot of hard wrestling, and I believe that on both sides of the mat, both guys were out there and they wrestled until they were told to get off the mat.”
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