Manhattan High\u2019s girls wrestling team proved it belongs among the state\u2019s elite Saturday, punching 13 tickets to state and finishing runner-up at the Class 6A West Regional at Wichita South.<\/p>\n
The Indians totaled 239 points, finishing just 8.5 behind team champion Garden City (247.5) in one of the toughest regionals in the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt actually taught us a lot,\u201d head coach Shawn Bammes said. \u201cWe were closer than we thought at the beginning of the year to running Garden City down. So we learned a lot from it.”<\/p>\n
The West Regional featured over half of the top 10 teams in 6A, making advancement a battle from start to finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Regional is always really, really tough,\u201d Bammes said. \u201cIf we make it through that one, there\u2019s a very good chance to place at state. The competition is good for us. We like seeing kids have to work to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manhattan\u2019s senior leaders delivered. Alayna Slifer (135 pounds) and Sophia Hoeme (140) each captured regional championships, leading a group that put six wrestlers into title matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey both had good solid days,\u201d Bammes said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been feeling their best and still went out there and put on performances and brought home regional championships. I\u2019m proud of the girls, proud of our senior leadership with this group, and those two both kind of leading the way for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four more Indians finished second: Eva Lucios (100), Evelyn Thornburg (125), Kayla Cramer (130) and Tasia Miller (155). Kalena Borge (105) and Tierra Young (145) added third-place finishes as Manhattan stacked points throughout the bracket.<\/p>\n
Additional placers for the Indians included, Erica Li (5th, 170), Kimberly Altamirano-Cruz (6th, 110), Alison Kaupp (7th, 115), Eleanor Radi (7th, 120) and Chloe Ramos (8th, 190).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re to the point where we\u2019re peaking at the right time,\u201d Bammes said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s ready to let it all fly here in a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the weekend\u2019s biggest breakthroughs came from the freshman Borge. After dropping a match to her opponent from Washburn Rural at league, Borge flipped the script at regionals.<\/p>\n
\u201cKalena Borge, a freshman for us, she redeemed a loss to the Washburn girl from league,\u201d Bammes said. \u201cShe not only beat her once this weekend, she beat her twice. She ran into her twice in the bracket and beat her both times. She received a lot of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite missing out on the regional title by a narrow margin, the Indians left Wichita encouraged.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were closer than we thought,\u201d Bammes said. \u201cIt gives us hope for state in a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Manhattan boys will compete in regionals starting on Friday.<\/p>\n
“I think we should come away from that one comparable to where the girls are, as far as numbers that qualify,” Bammes said. “The kids are ready. They\u2019ve had a little bit of downtime. Everybody\u2019s feeling good.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the boys wrap up regional play, the Manhattan program will turns its attention to the Class 6A state tournament Feb. 27-28 in Overland Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manhattan High\u2019s girls wrestling team proved it belongs among the state\u2019s elite Saturday, punching 13 tickets to state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,26215],"class_list":["post-135878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-professional-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}