The Pella girls wrestling team placed 10th out of 27 teams at the Prairie tournament in Cedar Rapids Saturday. Emmalee Spurgeon and Serenity Turner were weight class champions.
Head Coach Adam Hale:
“This tournament pushed us a little bit, which is exactly what we hoped for. We have a lot of wrestlers who are making great strides, so we got to see them against some higher level competition from a different part of the state. Getting to see different people gave us the opportunity to see different areas to improve upon as we prepare for the nearing postseason. Not only did we get to come home with those areas to improve, but we also got to bring home three top-three finishers from a tough field. Elaine finished 3rd at 190. I was proud of her physicality today and how she bounced back after a semi-final loss that I know is eating at her. Emmalee and Serenity both got some nice brackets to commemorate their first place finishes. Emmalee did a nice job continuing on her great start to the season and got a chance to test out a couple of new techniques we’ve been testing out in the practice room. Serenity put together a really solid tournament. She got to see one of the toughest opponents she’s seen all season and stayed really collected and patient while defending shots and turning them into her own offense.
On the JV side, Cami Smith really put some nice matches together today to finish 2nd. She’s starting to find some comfort with her wrestling now that she’s been here a little bit, so it’s fun to see things starting to click for her. As a team, there are definitely some matches and moments that we’d like another shot at, but overall the effort was again collectively good by our team. We’ve got some fun stuff planned over break with shaking up some practices, getting to go roll at Pella Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, joining other teams to practice, and, of course, getting to see our administrators run with us during our Indy 500 sponsored by Pella Motors. We’re looking forward to the back half of our season and continuing to wrestle as hard as we know how while striving to improve.”
Team: 10th out of 27
Individual placewinners:
105 Serenity Turner, 1st place, 4-0, 4 pins
155 Emmalee Spurgeon, 1st place, 4-0, 4 pins
190 Elaine Babcock, 3rd place, 2-1
235JV Cami Smith, 2nd place, 3-1