Kelly Walsh Win Controversial 4A Wrestling Championship

The Kelly Walsh wrestling team thought they were the 2nd place finisher at the 4A State Wrestling Tournament on Saturday at the Casper Events Center, until a scoring error was uncovered, giving the Trojans 4 more points. Those additional points allowed the Trojans to edge Green River by 2.5 points. It was a strange set of circumstances, to say the least, and WHSAA Commissioner Ron Laird issued this statement on Saturday night:

"A flagrant misconduct was charged against a wrestler from Kelly Walsh on Friday. He had scored four points at the time and was deducted from the Trojans point total. That also carries an automatic 3-point deduction for a total of 7 points taken away from KW and disqualified that wrestler from the tournament. Kelly Walsh did have a second wrestler in the 170-pound weight class who ended up scoring 11 points for their team by taking sixth place. That made the disqualified wrestler a non-scorer. Thus the 4 points should have been restored, while still keeping the 3-point deduction. That makes KW's team score 211 and Green River has 208.5."

At 170 pounds, KW wrestler Luke Nathan was disqualified in his match with Gillette's Dawson Hayden. But the Trojans had 2 guys in that weight class, so Aragon Garro became the scoring wrestler for the team in that weight class. Garro accumulated 11 points, which offset the 4 points that Nathan won and the 3 point penalty that was assessed for the disqualification.

The Green River contingent obviously is not happy at all with the new result and were planning a championship parade, scheduled for Sunday. The Wolves faithful is not very pleased with the WHSAA for not recognizing the clerical error on Friday, instead of Saturday. In fact, the school will be meeting with the WHSAA on Monday But Kelly Walsh is the 4A state champion in wrestling for the 2nd year in a row.