Sandite Weekly Sports Roundup: Girls Powerlifting Wins Meet, Wrestling Qualifies 9 for State

The Sand Springs boys wrestling team took fifth place at the OSSAA 6A-East Regional Championship Saturday in Jenks, their highest mark since 2020.

The team qualified nine wrestlers for this weekend’s State Championship, the most since 2018.

The Sandites had a tough regional with nationally ranked Stillwater and Bixby, as well as perennial powerhouse Broken Arrow leading the pack. Owasso edged out the Sandites for fourth place with 147.5 points to 141.5.

Kase Skaggs was the lone finalist with a 6-0 semifinal upset against second-seeded Ponca City junior Jimmy Swenson to avenge a district loss at 106. In the finals he fell to nationally ranked Aydan Thomas from Stillwater.

Mitchell Smith took third place at 150 pounds, winning a 2-1 overtime tiebreaker against Broken Arrow’s Garrett Stinchcomb in the placement round.

Mason Harris placed third at heavyweight with a 4-2 sudden victory takedown against Broken Arrow’s Michael Cook.

Jaxon Trotter placed fourth at 157, losing only to nationally ranked LaDarion Lockett from Stillwater before medical forfeiting the placement round.

David Ritchey, Jayden Pait, Jesse Moore, Ethan White, and Hudson Sheppard placed fifth.

The State tournament will be held Friday and Saturday at Jim Norick Arena at the State Fairgrounds in Oklahoma City.

The Lady Sandites didn’t have any State qualifiers in their first year, placing 42nd out of 64 schools at the OSSAA East Regional.

The Keystone Kids had several top performers at the OKWA Youth State Championship, placing third in Open 8U and ninth in Open 15U.

Hudson Waag, Hagan Wolfenberger, and Ryley Kester won State titles; Sutton Hawley was runner-up; Mason Londo, Karson Waag, and Jace Simms placed third.

Girls Powerlifting

The Lady Sandite powerlifting team won its second meet of the season at Chandler, beating the home team 161 to 110 in team points.

Jaden Jordan won her third meet of the year at heavyweight, taking first in bench at 160 pounds, first in deadlift at 390, and second in squat at 360.

Madison Thompson was runner-up at 220, placing second in squat at 305, second in bench at 150, and fourth in deadlift at 315.

Addily Shotwell was runner-up at 181, placing second in squat at 235, second in bench at 125, and fourth in deadlift at 270.

Gracie Worthington placed third and Olivia Alexander, Bailey Doughty, Kelsi Hilton, and Melanie Skelly placed fourth.

The girls will compete at the Regional Championship in Miami on Tuesday the 28th.

Soccer

The CPHS soccer teams started the preseason with a scrimmage sweep at Grove.

The boys won 4-0 behind two goals from Brian Boyles and one goal apiece from Eli Bise and Dawson Puckett. The girls won 3-0 with a hat trick from Ava Watts.

Both teams will return to action with home scrimmages against Collinsville Tuesday at 5:00 p.m.

Baseball

The Sandite baseball team won its first two scrimmages of the year 6-0 against Mannford and 18-10 against Westmoore.

Gage Elliott and Wyatt Rutledge combined for a nine-strikeout one-hitter against the Pirates on Friday and Rhen Rutledge went 1-of-2 at the plate with a triple, 3 RBI, and a run.

Jackson Turney, Dom Ornelas, and Alex Dudley had two hits apiece against the Jaguars, with Ornelas scoring a 3RBI homer.

The Sandites will travel to Owasso, Glenpool, and Edmond Santa Fe next week and will host Bartlesville on Tuesday and Bixby on Friday.

Sandite Wrestling Falls 59-12 to Bixby at Dual State

The Charles Page High School wrestling team ended the dual season with a 59-12 loss to nationally ranked Bixby (18-3) in the first round of the Dual State tournament Friday in Enid.

The Spartans took a 35-0 lead before heavyweight Mason Harris won a 2-0 decision against Garrett Ritter. Kase Skaggs won a 5-1 decision against Chase Dyer and David Ritchey pinned Tucker Clark to make it 35-12, but the Spartans won the final four matches by fall.

The Sandites ended the year with a 13-5 record, their best mark since 2019.

Sand Springs will return to action at the OSSAA 6A-East Regional Friday at Jenks. The Sandites placed sixth in Regionals last season and will be looking to crown their first Regional Champion since 2019.

Youth

The Keystone Kids wrestling club competed at the OKWA Northwest Regionals in Newkirk on Saturday and won the Open 15U category. The Keystone Kids had ten total champions, including several members of the Charles Page High School team.

Ayreson Reiss, Preston Reyna, Jace Simms, Hagan Wolfenberger, Isaac Sensintaffar, Hudson Waag, Na’Kya Canady, Karson Waag, Sutton Hawley, Ryley Kester all won their divisions.

Kason Wolfe, Ryker Dawes, Trey Tunnell, and Kydon Harness finished as runners-up; Mason Londo, Audree Robinson, and Rowdy Ash placed third; Holden Yingst, Maddix Spencer, Carsten Reiss, and Hunter Fields placed fourth; Ethan Schueler placed fifth; and Joshua Compton placed sixth.

All top-eight finishers qualified for the 45th annual OKWA State Championship that will be held February 17-18 at the Tulsa Fairgrounds Pavilion.

Mitchell Smith Secures District Title for Sandites in 39-34 Win over Ponca City

After missing out the past two years, Sand Springs is headed back to Dual State thanks to straight toughness and senior leadership.

With one match left in the Sandites’ district dual against No. 11 Ponca City, Sand Springs trailed 34-33. It all came down to Mitchell Smith at 150 pounds.

With a knee injury that many would consider season-ending, the senior put his team on his shoulders and came out with a pin of Braden Perciful in 30 seconds to secure the 39-34 victory.

“We needed him big time,” said head coach Ty Bowling.

“I said, ‘Hey. The score is close enough. We don’t need anything big, we just need to go out and get a win.’ He goes out and finds a pin. That’s huge for us. Senior leadership.”

“We haven’t gone to dual state since my freshman year, so this is big,” said Smith. “We had some bad losses the past two years, to teams we all felt like we should have beat, so it’s nice to win like this.”

Sand Springs went on to win 46-27 against Edmond Deer Creek and 48-25 against No. 13 Union to clinch its 18th District Championship Tuesday evening at the UMAC.

“Straight toughness,” said Bowling. “We had a handful of injuries. It’s January, that’s what wrestling is. We’ve got guys with bad ankles, bad knees, so they dug deep, a lot of toughness. They battled. They showed that they wanted it.”

“We’ve been looking toward these duals all season. We knew Ponca City was the defending champ, we know what they had coming back. We knew it was going to take all 14 doing their job, whether it was finding bonus, not giving up bonus, or just going out and just gritting out a win.”

Four Sandites went undefeated at the quad, including Jaxon “Scout” Trotter, who had to start each dual at 157 pounds.

“We usually start at 106 and we started all three duals at 157,” said Bowling. “He had three tough matches and came away with three wins, so he started us off right every time.”

Freshman Hudson Sheppard and junior Mason Harris also went undefeated, winning all three of their matches by fall.

“I’m just excited,” said Harris. “It’s my first time and I just want to know what it’s like. I was one year off from knowing what it’s like so I’m just excited to bring Sand Springs back into it.”

“We have a few injuries right now that are still healing up. By the time those heal back up we’re going to be even more dominant than we are now.”

Smith won both of his matches as well. With a 46-21 lead against Deer Creek, the Sandites forfeited Smith’s weight, but the senior insisted on wrestling against Union, where he collected a 31-second pin.

“I really wanted to,” said Smith. “I wanted to wrestle the second match as well, but my coach told me not to because he didn’t want to risk it, which is fair but I’m not a big fan of sitting on the bench and watching my teammates wrestle, so I tried to get some matches in as well.”

The Sandites still have a few tough duals left before Dual State, and will host No. 4 Broken Arrow (8-1) Tuesday for Homecoming and No. 2 Stillwater (10-1) on Thursday.

The varsity boys took the weekend off but the varsity girls and junior varsity boys competed at the Morey Villareal Memorial tournament at Will Rogers High School.

The JV boys won the tournament against a field of mostly varsity competitors, topping Bartlesville 207 to 194.5.

Dawson Briscoe won the 106-pound bracket with five pins, Brody Ensten won at 157 with two pins, and Peyton Callis won at 165 with four pins.

Colt Hood, Landen Horton, and Christopher Cooper were runners-up and Jackson Burdge, Preston Reyna, Brock O’Dell, Dallas Flores, and Cash Lucas took third place.

Madison Chambers took first place, Gracie Young was second, and Kreedence Behnke was third to lead the girls varsity to a fifth-place finish.

Youth

Gage Fadenrecht, Ryker Dawes, Collin Randall, Brackton Upton, Hunter Sims, Kase Skaggs, and Jace Simms all won their brackets at the Broken Arrow Wrestlemania tournament, representing the Keystone Kids.

Meet the Sandites wrestling dual is smashing success

For the first time in the Jarrod Patterson era, the doors were open to the public for the Charles Page High School wrestling team’s ranking matches, and it was quite the spectacle.

The Sandites and Keystone Kids wrestling club teamed up Thursday night at Clyde Boyd Middle School to host Meet the Sandites, as Sand Springs wrestlers at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels all settled who was the best in each weight class.

Sand Springs used to open the ranking matches to the public back when Kelly Smith was head coach, but the tradition ended around 2016. Smith retired in 2019, but is now back on the team as an assistant as his son, Mitchell, enters his junior year.

“We’re excited to have him back,” said Patterson. “We were just kind of talking, and he said that was one thing they used to do that kind of got kids excited, so I was kind of excited to bring it back.”

“It seems like it worked out awesome. It seemed like they got a lot of fan support, and it’s good from the youth all the way up to high school.” 

The stands were certainly packed as the action went on simultaneously across three mats. On the varsity mat, the black team defeated the white in an evenly matched dual. 

Many recognizable faces returned to mat duty, including state qualifiers Mitchell Smith and Brooks Dudley, who won their matches by fall. Missing were Blake Jones and Mason Harris, who are recovering from football injuries.

“We’ve got a couple kids that are injured, but once we get through those injuries I think we should be pretty good,” said Patterson. “We’ve got a good group. They’re all hard-working kids from freshmen to seniors, so I think we’ve got some good leadership in there that will help us in the long haul.”

The Sandites graduated only one starter last year and added lots of talented junior high up-and-comers to give the team some extra depth and competitiveness at every weight range.

“We’re pretty solid all the way through, so as long as we can stay healthy and just battle and continue to get better we should be a really solid team,” said Patterson.

“We’ll have three freshmen in there who have a chance at getting in the lineup. Our 106-pounder is David Ritchey, then Colt Hood will be in there some at 113, and Jaxon “Scout” Trotter will be in there at 138.”

They will lean on seniors Shane Wolf, Colton Luker, Ethan Norton, Sammy Naugle, Jones, and Dudley for leadership.

Last year the Sandites finished the season a surprising 4-6, snapping a 14-year streak of winning records, primarily due to COVID-related quarantines, injuries, and canceled duals. They still brought home four first-place tournament medals, however, and qualified four for the State tournament.

Varsity will kick off the season Friday at the Perry Tournament of Champions, and will battle Sapulpa in their first dual on Tuesday the 14th at 7:00 p.m. on the road.

The junior high team hosted its annual tournament Saturday at CBMS and the Gold team took home first prize, followed by the Black team in sixth place and the White team in 19th. The girls placed 12th in their division.

Dawson Briscoe won at 80 pounds with six pins, Kaden Pope won at 106 with six pins, Jace Simms won at 119 with three pins, and Bailey Copeland won 82 pounds for the girls with a pin and a 17-2 technical fall.

Hudson Sheppard, Jaden Allen, Waylon Jeffers, and Ryley Kester placed second. Jaxon Grigsby, Karsen Skaggs, Matthew Moore, Jackson Burdge, and Tanner Copeland placed third. Colt Hood, Caleb Childers, and Preston Reyna placed fourth

The Keystone Kids competed at Sperry and Owasso on Saturday. Weston Roberts, Ty Galloway, and Mylum Ache V won at the Owasso Ram Jam, while Julian Valdez, Hudson Waag, and Bailey Copeland won at the Sperry Smalltown Throwdown.