"I was pretty disappointed," Moreau said. "I had a couple of times where I could've pinned him, where I had turned him on his back a few times, and I was really looking to get the pin for the team. I'm happy to be a city champ, but we're all about the team here, and we didn't get that done."

 

Standout freshman Kendon Lee pinned Live Oak's Jacob Chenevert in the 115-pound final to start the eventual champions' title round on the right foot, and the Panthers never again relinquished the lead.

 

"(Lee) has been with us since the fifth grade," Brusly Coach Jimmy Bible said. "He was our little mascot, and finally he gets to wrestle in high school. Every time he could get on the mat when he was little, he would just soak it all up with any coach that would work with him, and over the years he's gotten better, and once we turned him loose, there was no stopping him."

 

Noah Landry added to the margin with a 3-0 defeat of St. Amant's Tristyn Wheeler in the 134-pound matchup, and Koby Mancuso's 6-5 survival of Zachary's Daniel Rittell helped extend the advantage in the 162-pound match, pushing the title just out of reach for Moreau and company.

 

Johnson's defeat of Goodman proved the icing on the cake.

 

"It feels pretty awesome to take it home and bring it to our place instead of over here," Mancuso said. "It's gonna mean a lot (to host next season's meet). It's gonna mean we're the champions."

 

Live Oak's Cody Hill won his third straight city championship by topping Brusly's Wyatt LeJeune in the 128-pound match, 11-3, also trying the Louisiana single season victories record with 73.

 

The senior also extended his recently captured Louisiana career victories record to 239 in helping the Eagles to a third-place finish of 181 points.

 

"I had a really good weekend," Hill said. "I accomplished more goals that I'd wanted for this season, and finishing out on a good note at city, it was a really good weekend."

 

East Ascension's Alex Betteridge beat Catholic's Jonathon Bradley, 9-7, in the 108-pound final.

 

His Spartans teammates DeQuan Jackson and Conor Karwath added championship in the 154-pound and 287-pound classes, respectively, pushing the squad to fourth place with 169.5 points.

 

Jackson beat Catholic's Matthew Mire, 6-3, and Karwath capped the intense two-day event with first-round pin, his fourth in four matches not he weekend.

 

"It felt really, really good because for the season I was 50-0 in the middle of January, and I fell off the last couple of times, so I knew I had to win this tournament again since I won it last year," Karwath said. "And I just had to prove it to myself that I'm ready for state, so winning this tournament meant a lot more for me than it probably would another kid, probably."

 

Live Oak's Brody Bonura punned Central's Dalton Holdman in the third period of the 184-pound final, and Zachary's Sean McManus edged Live Oak's Nick Simoneaux, 5-4 in the 197-pound final to help the Broncos claim fifth place overall with 165.5 points.

 

Dutchtown (127.5), St. Amant (110.0), Central (65.0), St. Michael (65.0) and Dunham (63.0) rounded out the top 10 team finishes.

 

Claitor and Jackson earned Outstanding Wrestler honors for the lower and upper weight divisions, respectively.

 

But Bible and company left with the biggest prize and couldn't have been much happier to do so.

 

"We try every year to win the city championship," the coach said. "This year we had a real good team. We started with a goal at the end of last season that we were gonna do our best and do what we needed to do all year long to win it. Being a Division III team and beating a powerhouse like Catholic in their own gym is huge.

 

"Throughout the year we go at each other and try to make each other better. They're big competition for us. I push him. He pushes me. If we're wrestling tough against one another, then I feel that we can do anything in our division that we need to do. Today is very big. These kids have worked their behinds off all year for it, and they deserved it."