Courtsey of the Garden City Telegram
Rocky Welton Invite expanding in 51st year
Published 1/29/2009 in Sports : GCHS

By JASON ELMQUIST
jelmquist@gctelegram.com

Braxston Medina remembers sitting in The Garden, watching the high school wrestlers competing in the Rocky Welton Invitational. Now, it's Medina's turn to be on the mat in front of the crowd for this year's Rocky Welton on Friday and Saturday.

"I'm pretty excited. But pretty nervous at the same time, too," said Medina, a freshmen at Garden City High School. "All the talk about it, how it's a big tournament and how tough it is. I'm pretty excited because I'm a freshman getting to wrestle in the invite. I've been watching it since I was five-years-old. So I can't wait."

Medina, who is ranked No. 4 in the 130-pound weight class, sure picked a year to compete in his first Rocky Welton. The invitational has grown so much that for the first time ever, the 51st annual Rocky Welton will be utilizing both the competitive and practice gyms at the high school. The first two rounds on Friday and Saturday the 103 to 145 weight classes will be held in the The Garden, and the 152 through heavyweight divisions will be in the practice gym.

"We've been talking about that for several years and have been looking around at other tournaments that we go to where they wrestle in two gyms," GCHS coach Monte Moser said. "So this year we're just going to move the upper weights for the first two rounds each of the days and kind of take care of those big rounds."

The tournament will consist of 26 teams including nine schools from Colorado, one from New Mexico and another from Texas. There will also area teams Holcomb, Hugoton, Scott City and Ulysses along with all the Western Athletic Conference schools competing.

"It's a big, loaded tournament," Moser said. "There's probably some tournaments in the country that are tougher, but I don't think there are any in Kansas that are tougher. We've got one weight class where two kids wrestled in the championship in Reno, Nevada before Christmas, they met again last week at 'Top Of The Rockies' and each time had a different winner. So they are coming here to try to settle the score for the season. They are from two different states, and they are the top wrestler from each state. So I'm hoping we can get into that mix and mess it up for them."

And Garden City has just the wrestler to mess up the potential rubber match. The weight class which Moser was referring is the 140-pound, the division in which GCHS junior Joey Dozier, currently ranked No. 1 in Class 6A, competes.

"I'm nervous just knowing who's in my bracket," Dozier said. "But once I get on the mat the nerves will just go away and it's just all adrenaline that I've got to base it off of. I've got to take it one match at a time and I know that if I get to one of them it's going to be a tough match. It's going to come down to whoever's doing their best and whoever's on top of their game."

Preliminaries begin Friday at noon with the semifinals scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. Consolation rounds will begin Saturday morning at 9 a.m. with the championship finals slotted to start at 6 p.m.

There will be two duals tonight at 6 p.m. featuring teams that will participate in the Rocky Welton — Canyon Randall (Texas) will dual with Rio Rancho (N.M.) and Conifer (Colo.) will face Garden City.


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ROCKY WELTON INVITATIONAL

At The Garden

Friday: Preliminaries, noon; semifinals, 8:30 p.m.

Saturday: Consolation rounds, 9 a.m.; championship finals, 6 p.m.

Admission per session: Adults $6; students $4

Tournament pass (all three sessions): Adults $15; students $10

Friday broadcast: 97.0/99.9 FM — hourly updates starting at 1 p.m.; 1240 AM — live starting at 3 p.m.

[Linked Image from media1.tenor.com]