DES MOINES — Friday brings a chance for Xayvion Anderson to get a new start.
Anderson, a junior for Marshalltown boys wrestling, lost his 157-pound state quarterfinal match against Abe Bushong of Southeast Polk on Thursday as part of the Class 3A tournament at Wells Fargo Arena.
Less than a week after Anderson’s sudden-victory pin of Bushong in the finals at the district tournament in Marshalltown, Bushong exacted his revenge with an 8-2 decision to help keep the Rams atop the 3A team leaderboard.
“He came out like we expected him to,” MHS head coach Luke Cross said. “We just didn’t respond appropriately — it became a matter where you’re chasing points rather than just controlling the situation.”
Bushong scored the first takedown of the match and turned Anderson for three back points before the end of the period. That ended up being plenty for the Southeast Polk junior, who neutralized Anderson’s offense.
“[Bushong] did a good job of tying Xayvion’s arm up in a Russian tie where he’d have to break that free before he could take a shot and it just ate a lot of the clock,” Cross said. “We have to avoid letting people slow us down.”
Anderson can still get his picture on the wall in the Marshalltown wrestling room as a state placewinner if he can defeat Dubuque Hempstead’s Dawson Fish in the fourth-round consolation. Winners of fourth-round consolation matches can finish no worse than eighth in the state.
Fish eliminated Anderson at state in his freshman year. Earlier this year, Anderson won a match with Fish at the J-Hawk Invite in the first tiebreaker period.
“He’s gotta bounce back big time now, this is a big one,” Cross said. “I’m sure there were nerves in that [quarterfinal] match … now we need to go into the next match with a fresh outlook and know that this match happened in the past now, and we’ve got to move forward.”
Lucas Bantz, Marshalltown’s qualifier at 126 pounds, bowed out on Thursday with a loss in the second round of the consolation bracket, losing 9-2 to Shandrel Thompson of Johnston.
Thompson scored four takedowns on Bantz across the three periods.
“I know that I’m stronger in the third period, so I was just trying to tire him out,” Bantz said. “But it didn’t really go to plan.”
Bantz finishes his first state tournament 0-2.
“We weren’t able to push the pace in that match like I was hoping that we could, and I think that was the biggest factor,” Cross said. “I told him afterwards, ‘Maybe right now is not your time, but your time will come,’ he’s grown so much in the last two years and he knows what it takes with the offseason work and now we just need to work on strength training because we have the technique base, even if there are situations where he can do better.”
This first experience opened Bantz’ eyes to the state tournament atmosphere and the caliber of the opposition.
“I’m definitely going to be back here, there’s no question about it,” Bantz said. “I learned a lot from this opportunity and it’s got me fired up to get better in the offseason.”