No. 10 Monarchs Set for 53rd Midlands Championships

EVANSTON, Ill. -- The Old Dominion wrestling team will compete in the 53rd Ken Kraft Midlands Championships at Northwestern’s Welsh-Ryan Arena on December 29-30. The Monarchs enter the highly prestigious individual tournament ranked as the No. 10 tournament team in the nation by InterMat and FloWrestling.

ODU enters the Midlands Championships after dropping a 26-15 dual meet to No. 3 NC State last Thursday despite splitting five bouts with the Wolfpack. The highlight of the evening came when Chris Mecate knocked off NC State’s second-ranked Kevin Jack by a 5-3 OT decision, and Jack Dechow rallied from a six-point deficit to earn an exciting 11-9 OT victory over No. 15 Pete Renda.

SCOUTING THE 2015 MIDLANDS

Eleven of InterMat’s top 25 tournament teams are expected to compete in the 2015 Midlands tournament including No. 3 Iowa, No. 8 NC State, No. 10 Old Dominion, No. 11 Illinois, No. 12 Rutgers and No. 13 Nebraska. A full list of expected teams is below with top 25 tournament squads in bold.

American, Arizona State, Bloomsburg, Brown, Buffalo, Columbia, CSU-Bakersfield, Eastern Michigan, Franklin & Marshall, Harvard, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kent State, Maryland, NC State, Nebraska, North Dakota State, Northern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Northwestern, Ohio, Oklahoma, Old Dominion, Oregon State, Pittsburgh, Princeton, Purdue, Rider, Rutgers, SIU-Edwardsville, South Dakota State, Wisconsin

For a complete list of expected notable wrestlers as well as ticket information please click here.

MONARCHS AT MIDLANDS

The following ODU wrestlers are expected to compete in the 53rd Midlands Championships.

125
Brandon Jeske (2-3)
Alex Madrigal (unattached) (12-3)

133
Emilio Saavedra (8-2)
Michael Hayes (6-1)

141
No. 2 Chris Mecate (5-0)
Tanner Stephens (4-5)

149
No. 4 Alexander Richardson (5-0)
Kenan Carter (unattached) (8-8)

157
Terrell Forbes (5-6)
Devin Geoghegan (7-4)

165
Seldon Wright (8-5)

174
Brooks Climmons (3-4)

184
No. 2 Jack Dechow (5-0)

197
Austin Coburn (1-6)

LOOKING BACK

Jack Dechow, currently ranked as high as No. 2 at 184, will look to defend his Midlands crown from a year ago in his home state of Illinois. In 2014, Dechow became ODU’s first-ever Midlands champion after blowing through Penn’s NCAA All-American Lorenzo Thomas by a 13-5 major decision in the finals.

Chris Mecate earned a fifth place finish at 141 in 2014, dropping a tight 11-7 semifinal bout to Edinboro’s two-time NCAA finalist Mitchell Port before defeating Illinois’ Steven Rodrigues 6-2 in the fifth place match.

At 149, Alexander Richardson will look to improve upon a seventh place finish at the 2014 Midlands Championships where he earned a victory over eventual All-American BJ Clagon of Rider.

In the team race, ODU finished sixth out of 50 schools as the Monarchs accumulated 79.5 total team points.

EVENT SCHEDULE 

Brackets will be released at 9 p.m. EST on TrackWrestling on Monday, Dec. 28 with the first session of wrestling getting underway at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 29.

A full schedule for the 53rd Ken Kraft Midlands Championships can be found here.

MIDLANDS COVERAGE

Fans can tune into the action on the BTN2GO live stream found here.

Additionally, a live blog covering all the Monarchs will also be available with the link becoming activated shortly before the event begins.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Results, photos and interviews will also be posted throughout the tournament on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

For an in-depth look to everything Monarchs Wrestling, make sure to follow the team on Facebook, Twitter (@ODUWrestling) using the hashtag #ManeFocus and on YouTube and ODUsports.com.