St. Michael The Archangel Catholic head coach Matt Infranca rebranded the Kumite Championships to the Kansas City Freestyle Championships.
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The event took place last Saturday at St. Michael The Archangel Catholic High School and featured divisions which included high school boys, high school girls, middle school and grade school.
In the high school girls division there were eight weight classes and there were wrestlers that made the trip to the event from around the Midwest area, primarily in Missouri and Kansas.
The TechFall Elite team out of Marshall had the most winners out of any club team with three. Mo West out of Eastern Jackson County had the second most winners with two.
Karlee Bellamy (125-130 pounds) ended a great day for TechFall Elite as she won her first-round bout by pin, earned a 14-4 tech fall victory in the semifinals before earning a 10-0 tech fall win in the championship against Lincoln College Prep’s Apple Davis.
“I honestly didn’t come out how I wanted to, but I came out and shook the nerves off and did what I know how to do,” Bellamy said. “My feet were stuck on the mat. Like my coach says, ‘When you’re nervous, your feet are stuck in cinderblocks.’ You just have to shake the nerves off and come out and wrestle.
‘The gator roll worked out for me. That is my go-to move for freestyle.”
Her teammate Braylee Farr (120) won her brackets just moments prior as she pinned Braelyn Dowdy out of Excelsior Springs in just 53 seconds. She won her semifinal match 12-1 against Leavenworth’s Riley Arnold.
“It feels good to go from losing a lot to winning,” Farr said. “It feels good to be accomplished. I tried to stay consistent and I moved weight class, so that probably helped.”
McKenzie Mason (135-140) was the third member of the team to take first as she rolled through her round-robin bracket, winning all three matches by tech fall.
“I thought I did pretty good,” Mason said. “I did some things better than others. I got to my ties and moved my feet. I got to my slide by, too. I use it in freestyle and folkstyle.
Below is a summary of the championship matches of the weight classes not already mentioned:
105-110: Nixa’s Elaina Goodnight fell in her first match with teammate Zoiee Ward by pin in 3:54, but she rebounded to win a 16-5 tech fall in the second match and by pin in the rubber match in 2:42 to take first place.
115: Lone Jack’s Lillian McCleary, a two-time folkstyle state champion, won both her matches in a best of three series against Nixa’s Heather Egley, getting pins in 1:19 and 38 seconds to earn first place.
155: Liberty North’s Tia Thorn was locked into a competitive three match series with Raymore-Peculiar’s Haylee Ray. Both wrestlers traded pinfall victories to set up a third and decisive match.
“She’s a really great wrestler,” Thorn said of Ray. “I need to fine tune some technique things, but I am pretty proud of how I came out and I wanted to work on my offense. I need to work on getting turns on top instead of stalling out.
170: Smithville’s Adalee Pickett went 2-1 in her round-robin bracket, getting two pins and felling to Cameron’s Isabella Bridger by pin, but she won the tiebreaker to take first.
190-235: It was just the second freestyle tournament of her career, but it didn’t stop Gallatin’s Mia Parker from dominating her three-match series with Harrisonville’s Taylor Kanoy. She won the first match by a 10-0 tech fall and second by pin in just 1:03 to earn first place.
“I haven’t really wrestled much freestyle, so this was a fun opportunity to be able to do that,” Parker said. “I really refined my technique and wanted to prep myself for the next folkstyle season.”
