North Mason's Evans wins state wrestling title

North Mason junior Sadie Evans won the 155-pound weight class during the 1B-2A girls state championship at Mat Classic XXXV on Friday and Saturday at the Tacoma Dome.

Evans is the first North Mason wrestling state champion since Zac Joaquin in 2011.

"It was pretty dang good. She pinned out, I think she might have spent all of her matches, nine or 10 minutes total on the mat," North Mason assistant coach Bill McCarty told the Journal. "Obviously, a lot of pins. Regardless of that, she really wrestled well. She wrestled pretty clean this weekend. The previous week at regionals, she had a really rough day, didn't perform very well. She got back in the room, got her head straight, let all that go and really came out and just performed really well, really clean."

McCarty, who has been coaching wrestling at North Mason in some capacity since 2006, said it feels good to finally have somebody break the title drought.

"We recently renamed the Ed Amick Wrestling Center, he was a coach here for a ton of years from the '70s until the '90s, a long time. He's been in poor health so he got to hand out the medal to the first state champions since 2011," McCarty said. "It was overall just a great time to have it happen and Sadie has been a really good girl. She's been working hard in the offseason, doing freestyle. She went to other states for freestyle competition, she went to Fargo (North Dakota). She started out the year, she had a concussion and she was having lingering symptoms so she was out the first part of the year until she finally got cleared and everything straightened out. Ever since late December, early January, she started just thumping and just got better and better."

Evans finished the season 31-5 overall. She finished in third place last year.

Evans won all her matches by pin, including the championship match against Napavine's Maya Kunkel with a pin in two minutes, 40 seconds.

McCarty said he knew early in the championship match that Evans was winning the title.

"It sounds silly to think that but within the first minute, she got a takedown and the way she got a takedown and it looked good and I think she's got this," McCarty said. "Kunkel got a reversal and it didn't even bother me. Normally, you take two, you give up two, you go, 'Oh, this is going to be rough.' But she gave up two and it didn't even phase her, she fought her off until the end of the round and then in the second round, she just went right back at it. We had choice, she had been so dominant on her feet all weekend that we said take neutral and she went out and the girl got her in, what we call a cow catcher, some people call it a washing machine, ton of different names for it. We hadn't gone over the defense for it a lot but we kind of touched on it but apparently, Sadie had gotten enough because she resisted, reversed and threw her on her back and then it was just a matter of time before she got too tired. She had her locked up and it was just a matter of time. After that first takedown, Sadie looked so good, so confident, and even after the reversal, she was in control."

Evans won in the semifinals against Steilacoom's Amina Thomas, winning by pin in 3:13. She pinned Granger's Sonia Mendoza in the quarterfinals in 3:05 and won her opening match by pin against Wahkiakum's Lilian Hale in 43 seconds.

At Regionals on Feb. 10 in Buckley, Evans finished second, falling in the championship match against Lynden's Belen Lopez by pin in 2:47. She defeated Highline's Serafina Godfrey by pin in 31 seconds in the quarterfinals and pinned Clover Park's Breanna Klein in 5:35 in the semifinals.

Evans thought she might face Lopez again, but Kunkel defeated Lopez in the state semifinals.

"She's really strong, borderline undersized for a 155. The girl she faced in the finals was probably 6 inches taller than her, long, lanky, strong girl that cut down from 170, but Sadie is just really strong, really technically clean," McCarty said. "When she's on, she's as good as anybody in the state. It's hard to be on on the right day sometimes but she's really put a lot of work in the offseason and she's really clean, and when she's on, she's really nasty to deal with."

After a successful season with a state title for Evans, McCarty said he wouldn't commit to her repeating as champion in her senior season, considering the champion from 2011 went on to take third in 2012. North Mason has never had a repeat state wrestling champion.

McCarty said he does expect Evans to wrestle in college.

North Mason had its first all-girls team this year with 14 wrestlers for head coach Erin Evans, Sadie's mom. McCarty and a fellow assistant coach helped to support the program. The team was the only girls team in the Olympic League as their own separate team.

"I think with that, it will help girls because when we started the girls program, we talked to freshmen and incoming classes and they were much more receptive to join the team when they knew it was only girls with a female coach that understands female issues, they feel more comfortable that way,"

McCarty said. "Having somebody to talk to and confide in. As head coach of the boys for years, we always had a couple girls. It was always fun, it was great, more people, bring them in, more people out here, it was awesome but just having a girls team really seemed to increase the draw and bring girls out and the girls were great. They had a good season, they're really excited about coming out for next year and I think they'll bring some of their friends out and give us some more bodies."

Author Bio

Matt Baide, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
Email: [email protected]

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