The Royal Valley Panthers wrestlers took part in the Topeka Seaman Dual Tournament this past weekend in a round robin style tourney facing off against five other teams.

Panthers were only able to register one win, but did earn a tie also with a pair of other close contests on the day. Royal Valley opened the day against the host school Seaman and fell 47-15 in their most lopsided matchup of the day. After that the Panthers meet up with Southwest who registered a 42-31 win over Royal Valley. Panthers tired their best in the next contest also but came up short against Hays falling 39-27.

Things started to look up for the Panthers in the final two contests as they earned a tie against Shawnee Mission East in their next contest 37-37, then wrapped up the action on the day on the mat with a convincing 57-21 win over KC-Turner.

Top performers on the day for Royal Valley were the ranked senior, Tanner Ogden in Class 4A and sophomore, Chance Ogden who with their great performances on the day earned all tournament team as their weight classes of 152 and 160lbs, respectively.

Panthers continue their wrestling season on Friday as part of the Bobcat Classic at Basehor-Linwood.

Royal Valley write-up by Head Coach, Jason Puderbaugh (below):

Royal Valley Varsity Wrestlers this weekend wrestled tough even throug some adversity as a team.  Saturday RV wrestlers took to the mat against 8th ranked in 5A Seaman Vikings, 8th ranked in 5A Blue Valley Southwest, 5A Hays, 6A Shawnee Mission East, and 6A KC-Turner.  After a great week of practice, the RV wrestling team was excited headed towards this weekends matchups with the most excited being Head Coach of RV-Jason Puderbaugh looking forward to facing Seaman, the school he graduated from in 1998.  RV wrestler came in fired up and wrestled strong against Seaman to start the day with the dual being neck in neck all the way until the 195 lbs. weight class where Seaman strong upper weights and Royal Valley's 182 lbs. freshman wrestling up at 195 lbs. and a 1st year wrestlers weighing 197 lbs. wrestling up at 220 lbs. versus two tough Seaman opponents so the Seaman Vikes pulled away giving us our first loss on the day 25-47.  RV versus Blue Valley Southwest, 10th ranked in 5A was another challenging dual, one that was within our grasp of winning but a string of losses from 120-138 with one being a forfeit at 126 lbs, plus giving up two pins at our weak underweight out matched weight classes of 195 and 220 lbs. proved too much to overcome and we suffered another tough loss 31-42.  Against 5A Hays, RV was looking to get things back on track and avenge an early dual loss but the challenges continued as one of our strong senior wrestlers Michael Bailey could not continue due to a bad case of the flu and had to forfeit out the rest of the day putting us open at both 126 and 138 lbs. plus our inexperienced and underweight weight classes at 195 and 220 lbs.  Even though the challenges existed the win was not out of reach, but we needed some tough wins at key weight classes.  It would turn out that at 145 lbs. we lost a close 7-10 3 round battle, at 170 and 182 lbs. both Christian and Tristen lost tough 1 point matches and it was down hill from there as we would expectedly lose at 195 and 220 lbs. and at Heavy Weight Wes just mistakenly got caught and pinned in the 2nd period.  Once again these challenges were too much to overcome, and RV suffered another frustrating loss 27-39.  Against Shawnee Mission East, RV got steam rolled to start the dual until Tanner at 152 lbs. and things began to turn around as RV stormed back winning 6 out of the last 7 matches (2 by forfeit) tying the dual score at 37-37.  However, 1 point would be awarded to SME for the dual win by criteria.  To close the day, RV wrestlers kept their head held high and closed out the day with a dominating win over KC-Turner winning 7 matches with 5 being by pin and also 3 wins by forfeit.  RV forfeit at two weights and the final dual score was a 57-21 win!  All in all our RV wrestling team wrestled extremely tough all day with only a couple disappointing performances on the day.  RV resulted with a 1-4 record on the day and a 5th place finish.  Christian and Tristen Matthews lead the day in pins with 3 a piece.  Both Tanner and Chance Ogden went 5-0 on the day making the All Tournament Team!  9 of our RV wrestlers got pins on the day.  We look now to just get healthy fine tune areas that we need to work on and prepare for our next action at home against Silver Lake and Washburn Rural in a Double Dual on Wednesday, January 9th.

JV Seaman Invitational Results:

Matthew Bailey:  3-0, 1st Place and 1 pin!
Josh Dunn:  1-2, 3rd place.
Sam King:  0-2
Eli Shane:  0-2
Charles Todd:  1-2