The names of Bell, Lozada, and Nelson will be on the wall in the Old Gym at Tallassee High School for years to come. All three had career-defining performances at the AHSAA 5A State Championship in Huntsville last week.
Mason Nelson is in a class of his own.
Wrestling in the AHSAA Class 5A state championship held at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Nelson claimed the 106-pound championship with a dominant 17-0 technical fall victory over Moody’s Brynn Jenkins.
With the win, Nelson capped off his junior season with a 49-5 record and his first state title. After moving down to the 106 pound class, he went 16-1 and won his last nine matches.
“I’ve been working for this since I was five-years old,” Nelson said. “This has been my life-long dream. I worked hard to get here and I’m happy to be here now. This is everything I’ve been working for.”
Nelson’s match was decided almost as soon as it started. Seven seconds after the whistle started the match, Nelson was on top of Jenkins and up, 2-0. He followed that up with two nearfalls in the first period and was in complete control, 6-0.
Nelson started the second period on bottom, and he quickly earned two points on a reversal and another three points by a third nearfall. Back-to-back nearfalls in the third period ended it via the 15-point mercy rule.
“My wing was really prominent in this match,” Nelson said. “I was able to get good wrist control early and I was really aggressive. I wanted it to be my match and my pace and make him uncomfortable.”
When the final buzzer blew and Nelson was a state champion, he wasn’t one to show much emotion. He turned around with his hands held high but wasn’t cheering or smiling.
He was completely focused on winning, and he was focused on just doing the little things right.
His game plan going into Saturday’s final was to just focus on the basics and not overthink it. He didn’t want to get too emotional and make a mistake.
“I wanted to be free and aggressive, but I knew I had to stick to the basics,” Nelson said. “Sometimes I can put myself in bad situations if I don’t remember my basics so I focused on that and really pushed the pace.”
But while he didn’t show the emotions on his face, he felt them. For Nelson, it was a year’s worth of work being paid off for him. Just a year ago, he finished third place in a tough 113 pound weight class in the same arena.
So when he finally realized he was a champion, it was a sigh of relief.
“I really did it,” Nelson said. “I was just so happy to be there and achieve that. I really was flooded with emotions.”
Tallassee junior Land Bell had a target painted on his back all season, but nobody was able to hit that target.
Bell, who won the state championship a year ago at the 132-pound class, claimed his second-consecutive state championship Saturday afternoon. Bell beat Scottsboro’s Josh Draskovic by an 8-
“It fills my heart to come out and win it,” Bell said. “It’s awesome and it’s just exciting. All the hard work from the offseason to in-season training and weight cuts, it’s paid off. I couldn’t be happier.”
Much like every wrestler across the state, Bell’s ultimate goal was to win another state title. But that wasn’t all he wanted this year. He achieved that milestone as a sophomore last year and he wanted to do even more.
So he set out to go undefeated. That’s exactly what he did, and not many even came close to beating him. In 54 regular season matches, only four were decided by a decision. The other 50 were either pins, technical falls or major decisions.
The closest was an 8-7 decision in the South Super Sectional Finals last week, and Bell came back and beat that same opponent 5-2 in the semifinals on Friday.
This weekend, he went 3-0 with two decisions and a technical fall.
“It was a milestone year for sure,” Bell said. “I set out to make harder goals and I achieved them. Next year, my goal is to win a Three-Peat and get the All-Time win mark for Tallassee.”
The 8-2 win over Draskovic doesn’t quite tell the story for Bell’s dominance on Saturday. From start to finish, Bell was in complete control of the match.
He took down Draskovic once in the first period, then got a near fall to make the score 4-0. That score held until the third period when Bell went up 6-0 on another takedown. He then pushed Draskovic off him and allowed him to get an escape point, then instantly took him down again.
He did it once again, and the match ended before he could increase the point total more than it was.
“I was just on my game,” Bell said. “I was in my head the whole time and knew I had to wrestle. If I wrestle to the best of my ability, it’s hard for my opponents. I wanted to go hard, quick and strong and that’s what happened”
Draskovic presented a different obstacle for Bell as he stood significantly taller than Bell, but that didn’t change the game plan much for Bell. He wanted to overpower Draskovic, and that’s exactly what he did all match.
“I wanted to get into his body and not stay far away from him,” Bell said. “I hit my double leg into him and tried to hit some wrist snaps and clubs and ties and knock him off balance.”
Tallassee’s Ramon Lozada ended his high school career on top.
After attempting to win a state championship each of the last two seasons at Elmore County and Wetumpka, Lozada finally accomplished his goal Saturday afternoon.
Lozada won the AHSAA Class 5A state championship in the 120-pound weight class. He pinned Jasper’s Kortez Samules at the 3:37 mark to cap off his perfect 43-0 season.
“This means everything to me,” Lozada said. “It honestly does. I’ve put in every bit of work that someone can put into this sport. The past four years, I’ve had to wrestle some of the best guys in the state but I was fully healthy this year and there was no reason I shouldn’t have won it like I did. It feels so good to win a state title and feels even better being undefeated.”
Lozada’s season hasn’t been an easy one, but he’s dominated every wrestler that has stepped on the mat with him. He wrestled Tennessee and Louisiana state champions, and he faced plenty of tough opponents from Class 6A. But that just made him stronger and that experience showed in his match against Samuels.
Lozada started fast and earned a takedown just 15 seconds into the match, then took down Samuels again a minute later. He led, 4-1, after the first period and was in full control of the match from the start.
“At the beginning when I took him down, it was pretty easy to take him down,” Lozada said. “I feel like in any match I’m in, I’m going to be the best on my feet. So I took him down and let him up, and took him down again.”
To start the second period, Samuels chose a neutral position and he got Lozada in an odd position. Lozada then attempted a high crotch takedown but failed, and Samuels was able to earn a takedown to cut the lead to 4-3. But then Lozada stopped playing around.
“When that happened, it was like ‘Ok, I have to go now. This is my last match. I have to make it count,’” Lozada said.
Roughly 30 seconds later, Lozada saw his chance and took it. After a small mistake by Samuels, Lozada was able to get a cradle and pinned Samuels.
“When I saw him crunch up, I threw the cradle as tight as I could and it got the job done,” Lozada said.
When the refs hand slapped the mat and Lozada was a champion, he was overcome with emotions. He circled the entire mat pointing and flexing his muscles, then quickly grabbed his t-shirt that had Masen Goggins’ name and number 23 on it.
Goggins is the Elmore County student who died in a car accident in December, and Lozada made sure Goggins received his love after the state championship win.
“I did it for my boy Masen,” Lozada said. “I did it all for him. All Glory to God as well. He gave me this opportunity to do this and I couldn’t be here without him.”-- Dalton Middleton, Tallassee Tribune