Kaw pulls off hefty feat
Perry-Lecompton heavyweight beats top three in class for title
by Brent Maycock The Capital-Journal
February 26, 2008
SALINA — Alex Hackathorn was the ultimate underdog.
Nobody expected the Perry-Lecompton heavyweight to challenge for the state title, let alone win it. Hackathorn was unranked and overlooked.
Perry Lecompton's Alex Hackathron was a surprise state champion in the Class 4A 285-pound division Saturday at Salina.
"Nobody's ever really given me respect," Hackathorn said Friday after making his way to the Class 4A state championship match. "I just wanted to prove everybody wrong."
Well, Hackathorn has everyone's respect and attention now.
He picked off the who's who of Class 4A heavyweights, knocking off No. 3 B.J. Finney, of Andale, No. 2 Spencer Hilley, of Clearwater, and No. 1 Bobby Doxon, of Goodland, en route to capturing his first state title Saturday at Salina's Bicentennial Center. The upset of Doxon was a dominating 7-2 victory in Saturday's title match that put the finishing touches on Hackathorn's meteoric rise to the pinnacle of 4A.
The moment was almost too much for the Perry senior, who was overcome with emotion following the victory.
"My buddies drove through a blizzard to get here," said Hackathorn, who finished the season 38-4 and became Perry's first state champion since Joe Corcoran in 2000. "My family's here, my family's family is here. It's just the people that matter were here to watch me and this is just the greatest accomplishment I've had."
He wasn't alone in that feeling. Royal Valley's Alex Rupnick and Baldwin's Kevin Callahan also closed out their prep wrestling careers as champions.
Rupnick's was the most dramatic of the three, as he pulled out a 7-5 overtime win against Clay Center's Joel Marrs in the 189-pound final with a takedown with 24 seconds left. With the victory, Rupnick became Royal Valley's first state champion since Shawn Root won in 1989, a drought of 19 years.
"This feels pretty awesome," said Rupnick, who capped a 34-2 season with his title. "I just had to try as hard as I could and see what I could do."
Callahan's victory ended his string of close calls. A state runner-up in both 2006 and 2007 by narrow decisions, Callahan finally claimed the title that had eluded him, knocking off Chanute's Cameron Jesseph — last year's 125-pound champion — with a 3-2 victory in the 130-pound title match.
"I tried not to think about (not winning) like that because there's always a chance that you're not going to get one," Callahan said. "After I made the finals, I didn't worry about winning or losing. I just went out and wrestled."
The championship was somewhat of a stamp of validation for Callahan, as well. The Bulldog senior went to Salina as a state recordholder, having set the state mark for career victories at regionals the week before.
But for Callahan, that record seemed a bit hollow without a state title to go with it.
"The record is great, but it doesn't have that meaning to it as much as a state title would," he said.
And now that he has both?
"I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world," said Callahan, who wrapped up his career with 171 victories.
Good luck getting Hackathorn to trade his experience, either. After missing all of his junior season with a knee injury suffered during football, Hackathorn was intent to make up for lost time as a senior.
His season appeared to be in jeopardy when he ran into Rossville's Duane Zlatnik in the finals at the Rossville Invitational. Zlatnik yanked Hackathorn's arm hard — "I thought he ripped it off," Hackathorn said — and tweaked his shoulder.
"He's going to run his moves hard and I'm going to run my moves hard," Hackathorn said. "Duane's one of the greatest wrestlers and persons I've ever known and we've been competing against each other since we were eight. When he did that, I was in pain, but I was going to fight through it. It was our last match and I wanted to finish."
The shoulder bothered him periodically the rest of the season, but it hardly hampered him in Salina, particularly against Doxon. The Goodland heavyweight tried for a quick shot, but Hackathorn locked him up in a headlock and then cradled him to the mat, nearly getting a pin in the match's first 30 seconds.
He settled for a five-point move that gave him plenty of cushion to coast the rest of the way. But Hackathorn stayed aggressive and never gave Doxon a chance to come back.
"It was just an instinctive thing that I didn't have to think about a lot, which is probably why it worked," Hackathorn said of the opening flurry. "I just kept thinking, 'Keep scoring, keep scoring,' because if I'm scoring, he isn't."
This article originally appeared in the Topeka Capital Journal and appears here with permission. Here is the original story link: http://cjonline.com/stories/022508/pre_250748492.shtml
