Williams
Skiatook’s Cougar Andersen (top) wrestles Collinsville’s Brayden Gilkey in last year’s Class 5A state dual championships in Enid. On Wednesday, the OSSAA approved an extended wrestling season with two-week gaps between the regional and state tournaments and the state tournament and the dual state meet.
ATHLETE OF THE WEEK Jordan Williams Collinsville
145 pounds, Jr.
Two-time state champ is 12-0 in 2020-21, with individual titles in the Broken Arrow and Sand Springs tournaments, and is 99-1 over three seasons. Owns a 9-3 win over Teague Travis, a three-time Missouri state champion and Oklahoma State commit who moved to Stillwater as a senior. Went 47-1 last year en route to the 5A state title at 126 pounds. Committed to OSU last month and is rated No. 5 nationally in the 2022 recruiting class by FloWrestling.
NOTEBOOK
Season extended
A one-year-only extension of the high school wrestling season will allow for two-week gaps between the regional and state tournaments and the state tournament and dual state meet.
The change in format is meant to give an athlete who was potentially exposed to the coronavirus (or quarantined) a better opportunity to continue, given the extra time between tournaments.
“We’re not trying to be different, we just feel it’s in the best interest of the sport,” said Todd Goolsby, wrestling chairman for the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association.
Goolsby presented the plan for appraisal by the OSSAA’s board during Wednesday’s meeting in Oklahoma City. He said the plan was recommended by members of the OSSAA’s wrestling advisory committee.
In the past, the three tournaments have been run on successive weekends, ending around March 1. But Goolsby said the pandemic poses unique challenges for wrestlers.
“If a kid qualified at regionals and then a quarantine situation came up, he would have no chance at all of overcoming it (with less than seven days) between activities,” Goolsby said. “This way, he at least has a fighting chance.”
This year’s schedule calls for regionals on Feb. 8 (girls) and Feb. 12-13 (boys); state tournaments on Feb. 25 (girls) and Feb. 26-27 (boys); and dual state meets March 12-13, the same weekend as the basketball state tournaments.
The state meet will be wrestled at State Fair Arena in Oklahoma City, with girls on Feb. 25, 5A-4A boys on Feb. 26 and 6A-3A boys on Feb. 27.
The dual state meets for all four classes will again be wrestled at the Stride Event Center in Enid.
Highway 20 frenemies
A heated rivalry flares up again at 7 p.m. Thursday when No. 1 Collinsville visits No. 2 Skiatook in a rematch of last year’s Class 5A dual state final.
Skiatook won 32-28 in Enid last February to capture its second straight dual state crown. The Bulldogs rallied from a 25-3 deficit and Brody Gee pinned Clay Gates 28 seconds from the end of their decisive bout at 106 pounds.
Gee, Cates and many others from last year will be in action again Thursday and coaches are predicting another tight match in the Brooks Walton Activity Center.
“It’s all gonna come down to bonus points,” Skiatook coach Jake Parker said. “We need to stay off our backs and avoid falls and go pin the (Collinsville wrestlers) we need to pin.”
Collinsville coach Wes Harding’s Cardinals are seeking a 10th tournament title in 11 years, but haven’t captured the dual state crown since winning five straight in 2011-15.
“It sure would be nice to win both again,” Harding said.
Located nine miles apart, the schools need little added motivation for wanting to wrestle one another.
“They want to beat us and we want to beat them,” Harding said. “It’s the nature of the crosstown rivalry. I was coaching junior high softball a few years ago and we wanted to beat them just as bad in softball.”
Pioneers fall, Spartans rise
Bixby punched its ticket to the dual state tournament Tuesday with a 33-32 upset of No. 1 Stillwater in the deciding match of the District 6A-8 duals at Owasso.
The No. 5 Spartans received key falls from Isaac Gibson at 285 pounds and Clay Giddens-Buttram at 113 to tie the match at 32 and advanced on the first tiebreaker criteria because they won eight of the 14 individual bouts.
Bixby fourth-year coach Brock Moore called it “the biggest win of my coaching career. They’re nationally ranked and ranked No. 1 in Oklahoma, so it was big.”
The Spartans (9-0) also defeated Bartlesville 56-19 and Owasso 63-18. Stillwater (4-1) defeated Bartlesville 76-6 and Owasso 57-15.
— Mike Brown, Tulsa World
1. COVID-19
1. COVID-19 pandemic affects sports world, but the games do go on
If sports were supposed to serve as a respite from the pandemic in 2020, they did not. There is only so much joy you can extract from playing and watching games with millions falling ill, hundreds of thousands gravely so.
The games did go on throughout Tulsa and Oklahoma, by and large, but not before our college and high school teams lost basketball postseasons, our college and high school teams lost entire spring seasons, and the Drillers lost a Texas League baseball season.
It was messy. Patchwork rosters stressed out coaches. Constant episodes of COVID-19 testing and contact tracing stressed out players.
Some coaches and players, Oklahoma defensive coordinator Alex Grinch and Oklahoma State linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez among them, tested positive for the virus. Everyone played on.
The vast majority of fans watched from home. Those at games were supposed to follow health and safety protocols. When that didn’t always happen, the stress throbbed.
Controversy seeped in everywhere, whether at Jenks’ state football championship or on Mike Gundy’s OSU media conference or as Tulsa-Cincinnati football games were postponed and later canceled. Still, everyone played on.
We got through it finally. And while Zaven Collins returning interceptions, Tylan Wallace catching passes and Spencer Rattler throwing them could be inspiring, there was mostly relief as one game passed to the next.
Sort of like there was as one day passed to the next, another day closer, God willing, to the end of the pandemic.
— By Guerin Emig, Tulsa World
2. Zaven Collins
The Tulsa junior emerged into one of the nation’s best players in 2020. After concluding his TU career last month (he’s entering the NFL draft), the big-bodied linebacker from Hominy received the Chuck Bednarik Award and the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, sweeping the two honors for national defensive player of the year. He also became TU’s second-ever consensus All-American. He helped TU to a 6-3 season, its first winning season since 2016.
3. Social justice
As the Black Lives Matter movement protested, among other things, the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans, local athletes spoke out. At OU, in late August, players and coaches walked arm-in-arm on a Friday morning onto and across the practice field dressed in black pants, shirts and masks, to the Unity Garden on the OU campus. Players were active on social media, too.
At OSU, Chuba Hubbard demanded change (other OSU players spoke out, too) after Cowboys coach Mike Gundy was seen in a Twitter photo wearing an OAN T-shirt. It led to a meeting between Hubbard and Gundy and an investigation by OSU into Gundy.
In September, the Big 12 announced an anti-racism, anti-hate campaign through its sports teams, starting with a social justice message on the front left side of football jerseys and a unity patch on helmets.
4. Mike Gundy
It was a season of controversy for the OSU coach. During an early April teleconference, the OSU coach drew criticism for his comments regarding the COVID-19 pandemic during an almost hour-long press conference. Days later, he apologized for his comments. In June, Gundy created more controversy, wearing an OAN T-shirt in a photo that was posted on Twitter. Hubbard tweeted: “I will not stand for this.” Gundy apologized, saying, “Once I learned how that network (OAN) felt about Black Lives Matter, I was disgusted and knew it was completely unacceptable to me.” On the field, Gundy led OSU to an 8-3 record with a win in the Cheez-It Bowl.
5. OU football
It was a rough early season with back-to-back losses (Kansas State, Iowa State), but OU ended the season on a high note with a 55-20 win over Florida in the Cotton Bowl, setting up a 2021 season with tons of promise. The Sooners finished the season 9-2 and Lincoln Riley earned his first bowl win as a head coach.
6. Eddie Sutton
In May, the legendary coach died at his Tulsa home at age 84. Less than a month before, Sutton was included (after being denied six times) in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2020.
7t. State titles
It was banner year for the Tulsa area high school football teams. Bixby won its third straight, and sixth overall, 6AII state title. The Spartans finished the year undefeated and have now won 36 straight games. Jenks coach Keith Riggs won his first state title as a head coach, guiding the Trojans to their 17th overall state title. Wagoner (4A), Holland Hall (3A) and Metro Christian (2A) also won state titles in football. The Dutch and Bulldogs each finished the season undefeated.
9t. Bowl brawl
A dramatic University of Tulsa season marked by thrilling conclusions and rampant schedule disruptions featured one final twist, an ugly brawl after the Armed Forces Bowl on the last day of 2020.
After the Hurricane stumbled 28-26 to Mississippi State at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, players from both teams were throwing punches instead of exchanging postgame handshakes, a wild scene that lasted several minutes while staffers and security tried to separate them.
9t. David Alexander
Despite leading the school to its only state title in football (in 2018), Broken Arrow High School fired its head coach after seven seasons in mid-December. Alexander, 56, went 60-23 overall with the Tigers.
“This had absolutely nothing to do with an incident off the field,” said Adam Foreman, BA public relations director. “It is purely a decision that we believe is in the best interest of the program moving forward.”
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Mike Brown
Sports Writer
I have covered high school football, basketball and baseball for the Tulsa World since Spencer Tillman, Wayman Tisdale and Troy Aikman were in the 10th grade. Phone: 918-581-8390
