Cougars easily pull off the repeat

By THOMAS SIMONETTI
Published February 13, 2005

DURANT - Durant cruised to its second consecutive district title by capturing the championship in its home gym Saturday with a total of 206 points.

The Cougars had five individual district champions and will send 12 to regionals next week at Pinellas Park.

"I think we've wrestled as good or better than we have all year," Durant coach Dennis Kitko said. "We're peaking right now. We've waited for quite a while to work real hard and we've really put it in the last two weeks. The guys look fresh and I'm super happy with the way they wrestled."

Justin Bechtold (112), Tim Burdine (130), Adam Doback (135), Jim Kauderman (189) and Chip Bowden (215) won district titles for Durant.

While the Cougars held a comfortable lead, the fight for second and third was close. Riverview earned runnerup honors with 159 points while Lakeland finished third with 149.5 points.

Bloomingdale was fourth with 143.5 points.

Kitko said a lot of teams scored well because the district has a lot of good coaching.

"I think probably four out of the top six in regions will come from this district," he said. "If everybody wrestles up to their capabilities you could see everybody in the top four."

C.J. Gittens (103), Greg Ferrara (145), Kyle Jones (152) and Sheven Kekoolani (160) won titles for Riverview. The Sharks will send 12 to the region tournament.

Jones, a senior, will be making his first trip to the region tournament after he was injured most of last season. He defeated Bloomingdale's Jacob Gardner in an 8-4 decision to improve to 33-3 for the year.

[Last modified February 13, 2005, 01:08:17]