<\/p>\n
In a sport full of tough individuals, Montezuma-Cortez High School senior Seager Oliver asserted himself as one of the toughest during a pin victory in the Class 3A 182-pound state semifinals.<\/p>\n
Trailing Salida High School\u2019s Nate Lowe (29-9) 9-7 in the second period, Oliver injured his left shoulder and lay nearly motionless on the mat for approximately 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
After speaking with doctors and coaches, Oliver returned to action roughly one minute later, finished out the second period and pinned his opponent with 1:14 left in the third.<\/p>\n
\u201cI dislocated my shoulder, said Oliver. \u201cIt popped out and I laid there for a second. It popped back in when I raised my arm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked what allowed him to fight through the pain, Oliver responded that the opportunity to win a state title his senior year kept him going.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to get the win,\u201d Oliver said. \u201cIt\u2019s my senior year. I\u2019m not going to throw this away.\u201d<\/p>\n
After dominating throughout his first two matches of the tournament, Oliver found himself in trouble against Lowe, who took the M-CHS senior down five times in the match.<\/p>\n
Many of Lowe\u2019s takedowns came after Oliver missed single leg and double leg shot attempts.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Lowe) was tough,\u201d said Oliver. \u201cHe had good technique and good takedown defense. He caught me off guard. I didn\u2019t feel I wrestled to my full potential, but we got through it still.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortly after the conclusion of his match, Oliver visited with a doctor and left the arena with ice taped to his shoulder. His words left no doubt, however, that he will be ready to go tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Oliver will meet Eagle Valley\u2019s Devin Ward (36-6) in tomorrow\u2019s state finals. Oliver defeated Ward 12-5 on Feb. 14 in the Class 3A Western Region Championship. Tomorrow\u2019s match will be the final one of Oliver\u2019s career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M-CHS senior fights through shoulder injury to score gutsy victory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":114394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6313],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-114393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114393"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=114393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}