Lexington edges Fort Dorchester in state semifinals

Lexington handed Fort Dorchester a 33-32 loss in the state wrestling semifinals Wednesday to advance to the Class AAAA state championship.

Fort Dorchester (22-2), which entered the match as the state's fourth-ranked AAAA team and was coming off a win over the second-ranked team, jumped out to a 32-16 lead in the match, but didn't have enough bonus points to put the match out of reach.

Starting with the 171-pound class, Lexington (31- 6), the fifth-ranked team, earned bonus points in the final three classes to edge out the Patriots.

Daniel Bannister, who normally wrestles at 160, earned a technical fall at 171. Alex Morales followed with a win by pin fall at 189. That left the Fort having to avoid a fall of any kind in order to win. Nate Meagher stepped up for the Wildcats, winning by pin fall with 23 seconds remaining in the first period to clinch the victory for Lexington.

"Fort Dorchester is in the top two or three every year so it is really big for our guys to come in here and win," Lexington coach Derek Strobel, the son-in-law of Fort Dorchester coach B.D. LaPrad, said. "It has been a long time since we have beat their wrestling team. For us to come into their gym and do this says a lot about our guys."

Fort Dorchester had pins from heavyweight Myles Moultrie, Austin Ziliack (152) and Alex Bugarin (160). Bugarin's gave the Fort a 32-16 lead going into the final three classes. Also earning bonus points for the Patriots were Javan Jordan (103) and Cody Williams (140).

Lexington also got pins from Walker Barfield (130) and bonus points from Russell Taylor (119).

"They were just a better team than us tonight," LaPrad said. "I probably made some coaching errors and had the wrong people out there at the wrong time. We had a pretty good effort from everybody tonight, but they were just a better team tonight."

Fort Dorchester, which graduated seven starters off last year's team, doesn't have any seniors this season.