There are many similarities when you start comparing Guthrie’s Bryan Dutton and Landry Chappell. After Saturday night their ultimate comparison in the athletic arena is now State Wrestling Champions.
Dutton and Chappell claimed their first state championships, inside the State Fair Arena, with narrow wins in the finals. The wins are the first for Guthrie head coach Jack O’Connor and for the Jays program since 1992. The Guthrie program has now produced 11 state champions.Austin O’Connor and John Davison were also state tournament finisher’s. O’Connor rallied for three straight wins after dropping his opening match to capture third place. Davison finished fourth in the consolation round and won two of his four matches. This was the first state tournament for both O’Connor and Davison.
Overall, the BlueJays finished in a tie for fourth place with Lawton MacArthur with 65 team points. Collinsville took the team title with 86.5 points followed by Deer Creek (82) and Altus (78). Collinsville also won the dual state title.
Dutton took the mat as the top seed from the West and took on the top seed from the East in Grove’s Spencer Rutherford in the battle of the “G” logo. Both wrestler’s entered with just one loss on the season.
After a scoreless first period, Dutton scored a 2-point reversal with :38 seconds left in the period to take a 2-0 lead into the final two minutes of action.
With Rutherford in the down position, he escaped from Dutton in the first 10 seconds to earn a point and bring the match to a 2-1 score. However, Dutton was able to keep his distance the rest of the way to claim the state title. Dutton is now 67-6 in his first two seasons, including 7-1 in the state tournament after last year’s third place finish.Dutton’s football, wrestling, and baseball teammate, Chappell needed seven periods to win 3-2 when he escaped Chickasha’s Jacoby Brown in the ultimate tie breaker. Last week in the regional championship, Chappell ironically took down Brown by the same score of 3-2.
The 215 pounders were tied at 1 at the end of regulation. Both scored a point in the tie-breaker periods before Chappell escaped less than five seconds into the ultimate tie-breaker period to send the faithful in blue into an uproar.
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Not sure if it has really set in how big of a deal this is for all the state placers. But being someone who has competed in and been around wrestling in the state of Oklahoma for close to 30 years, these guys really need to be proud of themselves. When I shook their hands and said congratulations, I don’t think that begins to show what this deserves. Any other sport your team can pick you up when you make a mistake…..not this one. And in matches this close, one mistake and it’s over. You can ask the thousands of kids who lost by one point and they can tell you the moment they lost their shot. Again, congratulations guys!! Wear this one proudly!