Notre Dame Pins Loss On Walker Valley Wrestlers To Open Season

Notre Dame opened the new wrestling season by handing Jay Adamson his first-ever win as a head coach with a decisive 44-30 win over Walker Valley Thursday night inside “The Stable.”

The Fighting Irish wrestled to four pins over the Mustangs while Walker Valley returned the favor with four pins on the night.

“I'm very proud of the way our team came out here tonight and fought against a great Walker Valley team,” said Adamson. “I'm proud of all of our guys, but particularly all of our new guys who had goals tonight. They went out there and fought hard and many of them exceeded the expectations we had for them. I'm very proud of that.”

Walker Valley head coach Al Morris — still recovering from post-surgery issues — watched from the sideline as assistant coaches Adam Raines and Andy Morris directed the Mustangs, who wrestled without a full compliment of grapplers.

“Some positives, but a lot of things we've got to work on though,” said Raines. “I'm not disappointed by any stretch of the imagination, we were short handed at some weights. But, we lost so we've got to get better.”

Jadon Vitrov (220 pounds), Josh Gray (113), Brady Lawson (132) and Elija Hughes (160) all earned pins for the Irish. Dylan Vintrov (170) earned a major decision.

The Irish will travel to Knox Catholic for a weekend tournament with both junior varsity and varsity participating.

“I'm grateful for all the managers we have that are taping our matches and keeping our stats because when I get home tonight step No. 1 is watching tape and seeing what we need to fix,” said the coach. “Probably not a whole lot of adjustments before the weekend, but we want to fix some things we had errors on tonight.”

Maddison Santos battled to a pin at 220 for the Mustangs who closed out the night with three pins in the final five bouts.

Christian Wilson (145) Asher Casley (152) and Josh Van Wyk (182) all contributed six points apiece to the Walker Valley final score. 

“There was a lot of enthusiasm by a lot of our guys. That's a good thing, but we also need to keep the bigger picture. I just got on to some of them. That last little stretch was pretty exciting, but we've got to make sure we're looking at the scoreboard and understand we've got work to do,” said Raines.

“We've got one guy out sick and we've got some skin issues that need to be cleaned up. We'e also got a lot of guys on descent plan getting down to weights they want to be at, at the end of the year.”

The junior varsity Mustangs will wrestle at the Ooltewah JV Invitational Friday before the varsity wrestlers take to the mat at the same tournament Saturday.

Notre Dame 44, Walker Valley 30

(Meet started at 195)