Wawasee’s Ricardo Romo controls Taylor Damron Thursday to close out a 66-9 Wawasee win. (Photos by Mike Deak)

SYRACUSE – There would be all sorts of reasons why Wawasee could have had a letdown Thursday night with NorthWood in town.

Nope.

Wawasee crushed the Panthers, 66-9, keeping its red-hot wrestling season rolling right along.

Despite the frigid conditions and snow outside, the Hardwood Teepee seats were packed as Wawasee returned home for its first match since winning the IHSWCA Team State 2-A title. While the buzz from its rapidly growing fanbase was known throughout the night, including the introduction of some Takedown Towels, Wawasee coach Frank Bumgardner and his roster are looking to finish the Northern Lakes Conference dual season strong heading into the NLC tourney in two weeks.

Isiah Faroute gains advantage of Ethan Rogers.

That message was made clear very early against the Panthers, as NorthWood found itself down 36-0 very quickly and had scored just 14 mat points en route to that figure. The opening 120 match between Cameron Jones and Jace Alexander started in favor of Alexander, but Jones worked a pair of reversals in the second period and held his ground despite a 17-6 Alexander major decision. That shifted quickly when Chris Schuller and Braxton Alexander followed with pins of Alex Walker and Lane Flowers, Braxton’s pin in just 30 seconds after a pair of laser-quick takedowns.

In what could have been a solid dual at 138 was quickly turned one-sided. Wawasee’s Geremia Brooks was the complete aggressor against Hunter Warren in a 19-4 tech fall for the ranked Warrior junior. Brooks worked six takedowns and only allowed the four points on passive escapes to Warren. The NorthWood senior, who won his weight class at the John McKee Invitational before Christmas, was wrestling with a heavy heart as his sister-in-law has been fighting cancer and was moved to Texas to continue to receive treatment.

“Today was Hunter’s first day back and his mind wasn’t totally into it today,” Hummel said. “Family is first, and we always preach that. Mentally he wasn’t here, and then ran into really good wrestler in Brooks. I think his mind is with his sister-in-law, and it should be. I commend him on just coming out here and doing what he could.”

Garrett Stuckman won the other marquee matchup NorthWood offered, using a 7-0 advantage after the first three minutes to ride out an 8-1 decision on Jake Chupp at 145.

Wawasee’s Logan Baugh celebrates his pin at 160.

A pair of pins in the next two matchups had Wawasee’s bench on its feet. Isiah Faroute earned a slap of the mat from official Roger Griffith at 2:47 against Ethan Rogers, and Logan Baugh picked up one of his more impressive wins, working back from a takedown to take a 3-2 lead and folding over Jaden Miller at 1:29 for the six points.

“That’s what we see out of Logan everyday,” Bumgardner said. “We see that work ethic at practice everyday, he just hasn’t gotten it to translate onto the competition mat some nights. He’s a good kid and an extremely hard worker, he deserves a result like that.”

NorthWood would get its lone competition win from Jake Lone at 170, a convincing 7-0 decision over Fernando Hernandez, and then the Warriors went back to work. Alex Castro, Damien Rodriguez, Dalton Pearish and Elisha Tipping all scored pins in the next four contests, Pearish’s the quickest at 58 seconds, and following a Wawasee forfeit at 106, Ricardo Romo closed out the night with a mat slap at 1:37 in the 113 card to give Wawasee it’s second 66-9 NLC victory of the season.

“We’ve talked since Team State, and obviously the kids are excited,” Bumgardner said. “If you want to achieve things that come with success, that way is to be entertaining. And the way to do that in the sport of wrestling is to score a lot of points. Take some risks. We’ve been freeflying in practice, and I think the results tonight showed that. They wrestled really well, and we as coaches were really curious to see how they would respond as well.”

Wawasee moves to 26-1 overall and 5-1 in the NLC, its lone blemish of the season a three-point loss to Northridge at its December Duals. The Warriors will look to finish the NLC strong against Memorial in its final home appearance. The Panthers will forge into the Fort Wayne Concordia Invite on Jan. 13.

NorthWood’s Jake Lone earned the lone Panther mat win with a 7-0 decision over Fernando Hernandez.