El Reno High School’s wrestling team will go into the Class 4A Dual State Champion-ships as the top-ranked team from the West after beating arch-rival Lawton MacArthur 41-22 Thursday night.

The win lifted the Indians to 22-3 on the season.

“We wrestled the best dual we have all season long,” El Reno head coach Archie Randall said. “Lawton MacArthur has got a good team and they are ranked number two or number three in the state depending on which poll you look at. But our kids came out and they wrestled hard.”

El Reno got a quick start as Adam Delong (130) pinned Taylor Watts in 1:26 to open the dual. Travis Lord (135) dropped a 6-3 decision to T.J. Traylor to close the gap to 6-3, but the Indians reeled off five straight victories to pad the lead.

“We won it through our middle weights,” Randall said.

Chad Craduck (140) pinned Jeff Adams in 3:15, followed by Nathan Dewberry’s 10-2 major decision over Deon Schuler at 145 pounds. Kevin Frazier (152) posted a 25-10 technical fall over Brian Trimble, followed by Chris Hacker’s 17-0 technical demise of Donald Maddux at 160 pounds.

Jeff James capped off the run with a 7-1 win over Chris McNeil at 171 pounds to make it a 29-3 margin. The Highlanders rallied through the heavyweights as Mitchell Eichenhauser (189) pinned Cannan Cooper in 1:27. EHS’ Ryan Marshall lost a 14-4 major decision to Anthony Kennard at 215 pounds and Jonathan Dutcher was pinned in 35-seocnds by Iowa State hopeful Nathan Fernandez.

“Our heavyweights wrestled hard, they just had to face some tough kids,” Randall said.
Up 29-19, El Reno got back on track with Austin Mogg’s 5-4 win over Ramon Willis at 103 pounds. Chris Crawford (112) followed with a 4-2 decision over Gerald Jenkins. Derek Gibbs dropped a close 4-2 match to Tyler Zuckerman at 119 pounds and Brian Shelton won by forfeit to close out the dual.