Outside the Tribe: BHS Wrestling Team Deserved a Better Script for End of Season
By Chris Johnson on April 20, 2021 from Outside the Tribe
If you have watched even a little bit of professional wrestling you have surely noticed that sometimes good guys turn bad and bad guys turn good.
Sometimes people show up unexpected, sometimes they fail to show up at all.
Behind the scenes this is referred to as a “swerve” and it’s basically a device used to get a reaction out of the fans. Of course, in pro wrestling, everybody behind the scenes is on it. That’s just one of the countless differences between the wrestling we see on TV and the wrestling currently going on at the state tournament in Huntington.
Class AAA schools from across West Virginia are battling it out for a team championship. Individuals in 14 weight classes are doing everything they can to be the last one standing and take the highest spot on the podium.
Bridgeport High School is not one of those schools. Eight individuals for the Indians who qualified to be at states after a strong Region I showing are not among those in Huntington.
My mind keeps going back to the word swerve which seems to be the best way I can describe what happened to the BHS wrestling team. It’s a swerve that the Indians weren’t privy to. The script was altered and there was nothing the Indians could do about it.
Behind a wall of rumors, HIPAA Laws, and maybe a bit of inconsistent comprehension of COVID-related guidelines for the sport, the details are not 100 percent clear as to why the Indians are not competing in the state tournament.
Here’s some of what I know and what I think I know:
On April 10, Bridgeport competed in the Region I championship meet at John Marshall High School and had a fantastic performance. Four wrestlers went undefeated and captured regional championships to qualify for the states. Four more also punched their ticket by placing no worse than fourth.
Last Thursday, it was reported that Bridgeport’s eight wrestlers would not be allowed to compete in the state tournament because of COVID quarantine restrictions. According to the Harrison County Board of Schools, BHS was exposed during the regional meet.
Last Friday, a wrestler from Wheeling Park, who was originally ruled ineligible to compete at states for COVID-related quarantine issues, had that decision overturned in court and he did in fact compete on Monday in Huntington.
With the overturn of that decision, Bridgeport was the only school from Region I to have a wrestler forced out of the state tournament.
Maybe the BHS wrestling team was victim to being in the absolute worse place at the absolute worse time?
Last week, the Harrison County BOE also reported that there were 300 county student athletes in quarantine, maybe that has a bigger role on the wrestling team’s situation?
Maybe, from the time the wrestling team learned they had to quarantine last Thursday, there simply wasn’t enough time to change the situation by Monday morning no matter how many negative test results were gathered?
The how may remain murky, the decision is always going to stink.
I find it difficult to believe the only eight Region I wrestlers exposed were from Bridgeport.
I can guarantee you that BHS coach Dr. Chris Courtney would never put his team in a situation where they would break health protocol. Dr. Courtney was even one of the coaches who provided input before the season as to what the COVID related guidelines should be for the WVSSAC.
Earlier this season, he pulled his team from a match that would have been the closest to Bridgeport they competed in all year out of precaution for a potential non-COVID related health risk.
This team followed the rules, they played it safe all season long in regard to the guidelines all with the goal of being in a position to make an impact at the regional. And it worked. It worked perfectly.
Hard work was such a trait of this team that had to travel for every single match this year. They bonded on those long road trips. They bonded over the hours of work put in at Courtney’s wrestling room.
Four of the wrestlers supposed to be in Huntington were undefeated this year. It’s tough enough to win one wrestling match let along every single one of them.
Among the other four, the worst record was 9-4.
One of them was ranked No. 1 in his weight class, four more were ranked in the Top 5.
At this point though it’s not so much about the records and rankings. Eight wrestlers talented enough to win a state title, eight that could very well of lost in the first round Monday. We’ll never know because eight wrestlers didn’t get the opportunity for the season to play out to the end.
Fourteen individual state champions will be crowned today. One school will take home the team championship. And they all will have earned it. It’s not like BHS wrestlers are the only ones that put in the work. It just would have been nice to have seen how much more noise these eight BHS wrestlers would have made on the biggest stage.
In pro wrestling the best swerves are the ones we don’t see coming.
That certainly doesn’t apply here though. Kamar Summers, Bryce Carnes, J.T. Muller, Kemo Summers, Derek Starkey, Bladen Roush, Brody Carnes and Conner Arnett deserved a much better script than the one that was given to them.
