Bailey Chafin led the Sweet Home girls to a second-place finish Saturday, Feb. 15, in the OSAA 4A/3A/2A/1A Special District 2 championships held at Cottage Grove.
Chafin won the 125-pound individual championship, her third regional title in a row, but seven other girls also placed to give the Huskies 145 points, behind Harrisburg, which had three of four girls win individual titles and finished with 153. Sutherlin was third with 135 points.
Sweet Home finished with four state qualifiers: Chafin at 125 pounds; Lyla Ventura, who placed third at 105; Bella Rico, who was third at 130; and Madi Looney, who was fourth at 135 pounds.
Other place-winners for Sweet Home were Amelia Sullens, fifth at 105; Alizeah Weikel, fifth at 115, Eturnyti Allison, fifth at 145, and Emmaline Durrett, sixth at 235.
“I’m happy about how we competed,” said Girls Coach Kami Hart. “To be honest, I don’t think that there was anyone who let us down.”
The finals win didn’t come as a surprise as Chafin came into the tournament with a 42-4 record and as a two-time titlist both in the region and at state, but it took her a minute or so to break through on Arianna Flores of Sutherlin. Once she got Flores on the floor, though, the end came quickly.
“ Bailey is just as consistent,” said Head Coach Steve Thorpe. “But Bailey, you know, a lot of people think she’s just good, but she works so stinking hard, she never misses an opportunity to get better.”
Both of Sweet Home’s consolation champions pulled off big wins in their final matches.
Rico, a freshman, was pinned in the semifinals to Harrisburg’s Lily Ridgley, who ended up second. Rico had already scored an upset win over Brookings-Harbor’s Lexie Newman, who came into the tournament with a 14-3 record, pinning her in 3:01 in the first round of the championship bracket after winning a preliminary match to make the bracket.
Then, in the third-place match, Rico faced Newman again and this time caught her in a head-and-arm after being taken down, and pinned her in 52 seconds.
“I didn’t expect a win at all,” Rico said of the final. “When I first beat her, I thought it was an accident. So when I beat her again, I was so happy.
“I did not think I was gonna be able to make state. Really, I’m so happy.”
“Bella Rico was probably one of the highlights of the tournament,” Thorpe said. “She beat a couple of people she shouldn’t have beat. But she is so strong and so, I guess, willful that I’m gonna tell you, she earned those wins.
Said Hart: “Bella’s match against that Brookings-Harbor girl – holy cow, she did it twice. That’s insane. She’s good with that head and arm. And I’ve noticed that through the season, too, her body awareness is beyond a lot of these girls. That’s what makes her a great wrestler.
“Lyla did really, really well,” she added.
Ventura said her win was fulfillment of her expectations.
“My goal was to finish third,” the freshman said. “I just wanted to place, to go to state.”
Things weren’t looking good, though, as she faced Mazama’s Abigail Irish, who came into the tournament with a 23-8 record, in the third-place match, pinning Irish with 45 seconds left on the clock.
“I was getting beat in the, like, first five minutes,” Ventura said. “It was rough going but in the end, I just don’t know how, but I just got her and pinned her.”
“It feels amazing.”
Thorpe said Ventura followed directions when it counted.
“She trusted her staff, her coaches,” he said. “We said, ‘You’ve got to come around front, you’ve got to go big.’ And she did.”
Looney, he said, pulled off a similar feat in the consolation semis, against Chloe Carr of Coquille.
“She was behind, she was getting beat, and she had to pin somebody and she did.”
He also credited the other placewinners: “Amelia, Alizeah, Eturnyti – they all got fifth places, they ended on an odd number and I’m proud of them for that.”
Hart noted that Durrett, a senior who placed second at the Reno Tournament of Champions in late December, then broke her hand the following week, came into the tournament after that long layoff. Durrett, who likely would have been one of the favorites at 235 pounds, went 1-3 for the tournament.
“Emma coming back after she broke her hand, that surprised me,” Hart said. “You know, she came out and she wasn’t scared of it either. She just did what she had to do.”
Hart said the Huskies have shown “so much growth” since the beginning of the season, when many of them were brand new to high school wrestling. Thorpe echoed that.
“One thing to look at in this entire tournament, Bailey Chafin is the only one that’s been wrestling since she was little. The rest of them are either in their second year or a first-year wrestler, and so it speaks volumes to the amount of work they’ve put in to get to where they’re at right now.”
“It’s a little crazy,” Hart said of the team’s progress. “Even those who came out on Day 1, the improvement is insane.
“When we started, half of them didn’t win any matches until however long in the season. And then they come here and it’s like a totally different person.
“Honestly, I think as a team we’re pretty solid to get second place at regionals. I mean I would like to qualify more for state, but I think we have a really solid group.”
Said Thorpe: “We had girls score points for us and step up and do things that we needed them to do, getting those pins and those major decisions. They’re huge in that tournament.
“For us to get second, I’m awfully proud of what the girls accomplished there.”
The girls will compete along with the boys Thursday and Friday, Feb. 27 and 28, in the state championships at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland. Wrestling starts at noon on Thursday and 2:45 p.m. on Friday.
