Silver Knights open up the season at St. Marys in the Middle Island Creek Championships taking one win with two losses. The lone team win came vs. Ritchie County with the Knights dropping to both Doddridge County and host St. Marys. Our first time on the mat went as expected with such a young product being put on the mats. This year the Knights do not have a Senior on the team and will count on Junior returning State qualifiers, Kellan Dalrymple and Gideon Winfrey as well as fellow junior teammates Wesley Kelly and Connor Holberton. The Knights will mix in several returning Sophomores from a year ago, Martel King, Kolton Underwood and Israel Winfrey. Two new additional Sophomores have joined the team that being Garrett Richards and Max Winters. When you add that to the eight incoming freshman, Collin King, Stryder Shields, Peyton Bake, Dalton Newbrough, Damien Dawson, Coby Criss, Michael Hartline and Daemyn Johnson, there are going to be a lot of growing pains throughout the year. I felt the team wrestled hard and gave it a great effort. We were without several veteran starters but that allowed the younger guys to get some great experience.

Going 3-0 on the evening leading the way for the Knights, giving the crowd an exciting match, was Kellan Dalrymple who took a large lead early going up 7-0 then seeing himself falling behind 15-7 with just :32 seconds left. The match had a lot of time outs and a lot of blood. During the last stoppage due to his opponent’s bloody nose, I reminded Kellan he only had 30 seconds left and he was losing. I said, “Go do what Kellan does and pin this cat.” Kellan responded with, “I got you Coach,” and sure enough, with about 8 seconds left Kellan was able to flip his opponent over and stick those shoulder blades to the mat for the pin. Also going 3-0 in the Varsity line up was Sophomore Martel King. Finding himself in the line-up for the 1st time ever was Kolton Underwood, who wrestled JV last year for the Knights, Kolton was able to go 2-1 with two big wins and showed to be the most improved from last year on this young season.

   This is a BIG week for the Knights mat men. Tonight, we will host a quad match vs. returning State Champs and favorites again this year, Cameron. North Marion and Magnolia will also be in the castle to round out the quad match that will start at 6 PM.

Then Friday and Saturday, the home Knights will host two separate tournaments. On Friday, December 19th starting at 5:30 PM, the 1st annual Lady Knights Clash in the Castle wrestling tournament will take place with over 25 teams in attendance.

On Saturday, December 20th we will honor Legendary Coach and a Tyler Consolidated Hall of Fame member, in the Larry Richie Memorial, Wrestle – A – Bout Wrestling Tournaments that starts at 11:00 AM and will host 16 teams from all corners of the State. We hope you all can join us to support the Knights who work hard day in and day out!