It was pretty exciting because the tournament unfolded over several days, which gave us an opportunity for a fun road trip/mini-vacation as well as watching some exciting matches.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
We weren't sure what to expect since this was the highest level tournament Sawyer has been in so far. The qualifiers came from such a broad area, made up of the most dedicated of wrestlers, so we knew the competition would be intense.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
The event was held in the Olympic venue in downtown Atlanta. Being in such a big place made it feel even more exciting.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
The first day of the tournament was Greco (olympic style), which is Sawyers favorite. Here he is (in red) getting ready to go out on the mat.
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| From 2014-05-23 |
After 4 tough matches, Sawyer took first place and became the southeast regional champ in Greco.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
A blessing and a curse of wrestling tournaments is there is a lot of time between matches. In this case it was blessing because it gave us time to explore places like the CNN center
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| From 2014-05-24 |
We also had time to hang out at the hotel pool, but were surprised with how crowded it was. It looked like a lot of Atlantans like to book a room for the weekend and just hangout at the hotel or go to clubs and restaurants.
Being a cheapskate, I'd never thought of doing that, but I have to admit, it looked pretty fun and relaxing.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
One of favorite parts of the trip was seeing all the interesting people going to the MoMoCon convention. The place was swarming with people dressed up as their favorite Japanese anime characters.
We had great seats and watched them parade by. Here are a couple people that agreed to pose for us.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
There were a lot of hard matches throughout the weekend but for the most part, Sawyer either tech'd or pinned his opponent. (Sawyer is in blue)
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| From 2014-05-23 |
Here's Sawyer racking up another win. He ended winning all his matches except the freestyle championship on the second day, in which he ended up taking second against a very good wrestler from Virginia.
We didn't know much about his opponent at the time, but we later found out that he was one of the top 5 or 6 in the country. He wasn't as strong as Sawyer but he was very fluid and cat-like, which is Sawyer's kryptonite.
In fact, Sawyer would end up going on to meet up with the boy from Virginia a couple weeks later at the Team Dual National Championship in Indianapolis. (with an almost identical score unfortunately)
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| From 2014-05-23 |
We are so proud of how hard Sawyer worked and how well he did. For only being his second year of greco/freestyle, he's done quite well.
Here's Sawyer with coach Pete who's been his favorite coach and who introduced him to greco/freestyle.
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| From 2014-05-24 |
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