Tiger Wrestler Shines Bright

Dripping Springs has had wrestling as a sport only a relatively short period of time but have turned out some top-notch wrestlers. Chase Warden is one of those next in line athletes. Wrestling, like most school sports, extends into a year-round activity with select teams filling out the rest of the year. Joe Kirksey, the Tigers wrestling coach, turned in this report on how Warden spent part of his summer excelling as a representative of Dripping Springs and the State of Texas.

Each summer every state sends their best to Fargo, South Dakota for the Cadet and Junior National Championships. First the athletes compete in freestyle wrestling and then in Greco-Roman wrestling. Freestyle and Greco are the Olympic/International styles of wrestling, which are different from what high schools compete in.

Warden represented Team Texas in the freestyle, 138-pound weight class in the Cadet division, which consists of mostly ninth and tenth graders. Warden placed fifth in a bracket of 86. He went 6-2 and outscored his opponents 82-20. He nearly pinned the eventual champion in the quarterfinals. Five of the six matches he won were stopped early due to the technical superiority rule. That is like the mercy rule in other sports. If a person goes up by 10 or more points, the match is over. Warden was only one of two Texans to place in the Cadet division. The other finished seventh.

Two days later, Warden competed in the cadet division of Greco-Roman wrestling. He placed third in a bracket of 74 with a 6-1 record while outscoring his opponents 75-9. All six of his wins were by technical superiority. The person he defeated 11-0 for third place had won the 132 division in cadet freestyle, but opted to move up a weight class for Greco-Roman. Warden was one of five medalists from Texas in the Cadet Greco-Roman division. In addition, the Texas Coach named Warden as the Outstanding Wrestler in cadet freestyle as well as sharing the Tournament Iron Man award with another.