West Holmes junior Louden Dixon recently competed with 128 of the top 16U Freestyle high school wrestlers and finished in the top 12 at the USA Wrestling U.S. Marine Corps Fargo Nationals at the FargoDome in Fargo, North Dakota.
According to the West Holmes wrestling newsletter, No. 21 Dixon of Team Ohio in the 157 pound class started the tournament with an 11-0 technical fall win over Christopher Nocca of Team New York at 2:25. He went on to lose a 5-5 criteria decision in the championship round of 64 to Noah Tucker of Team Maryland, and then beat Jacob Hodge of Team Michigan 14-4 by technical fall.
The following day he went undefeated, starting with a 10-0 win over Team Ohio’s Nick Werbrich. Dixon had a 6-4 win over Zachery Little of Team Tennessee in the consolation round of 8. He also had an 11-0 technical fall win o er Preston Burroughs of Team Rhode Island in the consolation round of 16, and a 10-7 win over Tomm Heiser of Team Wisconsin in the consolation round of 32. Later in the evening he beat Julius Pacheco of Team Michigan 7-4.
Dixon appeared to come from behind to win 5-4 in the consolation round of eight. However, it was overturned through a coach’s challenge, which led to Kawayran Vasquez of Team Florida. This ended his chance to be the second Knight ever to be a Fargo All-American.
After one period, Dixon had a 1-0 lead due to a passivity penalty point. He was warned for passivity and put on the 30 second clock to score. Vasquez ended up with a 2-1 lead with about a minute left in the match.
Vasquez went on to take Dixon down with 35 seconds left to make it a 4-0 lead, but he couldn’t turn him over. Dixon cut the lead to 4-3 with about 15 seconds left, and then took a 5-4 lead after a “duck under and go-behind” move. They subsequent challenge showed that Dixon didn’t have control of Vasquez, and two points were taken off the board leading to the Vazquez win.