The last week of the regular season is a delicate thing teams have to try and balance between staying fresh and injury free and fine tuning things to get that slight edge heading into the District tournament. The Mexico Lady Bulldogs did just that. They had a tri-meet set of duals this past Tuesday at Eldon and went against the host school as well as the Stover Lady Bulldogs.
The Mexico Lady Bulldogs then traveled down to St. Clair Missouri for their annual Last Chance Scramble. Originally there had been 15-16 teams listed in attending that event but for various reasons five of them (including two District 2 opponents) didn’t show up.
During the tri-meet dual hosted by Eldon, which was also their senior night, the Mexico Lady Bulldogs overwhelming numbers were able to dispatch both Stover and Eldon in consecutive fashion closing out their dual season record with a solid 13 wins and only 6 losses.
At the St. Clair Tournament, as stated earlier, several teams chose not to attend and thus made the size of the brackets that were originally anticipated a lot smaller when wrestling began. It was also going to be a chance for them to see the last couple of District 2 teams that they hadn’t had a chance to see all season to this point. The Lady Bulldogs brought 9 competitors to the event and some of them were able to secure some much needed momentum heading into the post-season.
As a team the Lady Bulldogs finished with 60 team points and in a modest 7th place finish. Mexico secured 8 total pins on the day, while racking up a total of 61 match points. Out of the 9 wrestlers, three of them reached the podium (top 4).
Zuri Crews finished 2nd at 135 lbs. after going 4-1 on the day. Her lone loss was to the St. Clair’s 135 lb. wrestler. Cassius Williams finished in 4th place at 170 lbs. During her tournament she was able to secure a victory over a District 2 opponent from Orchard Farm, whom she might wrestle again in less than a week at the District Tournament. The last medalist was Senior Abigail Bowen. She pinned all three of her opponents in the first period en route to another individual tournament title, her fifth this season. After her second round match victory, Bowen reached another career milestone, 100 career pins! She is the second Mexico Lady Bulldog to reach such a milestone in the program’s history and second this season (Alexus Johns reached the 100 pin mark on January 16th).
Up Next:
The Mexico Lady Bulldogs will be hosting one of the state qualifying meets this weekend on both Friday and Saturday (Feb. 13 & 14), the Class 1, District 2 meet. The Lady Bulldogs will bring the largest lineup into the District meet. They have two returning state qualifiers, both seniors, who would be overjoyed to have some of their underclassmen teammates join them as fellow competitors at Mizzou arena in a couple of weeks.
