KISSIMMEE – Fleming Island High wrestling coach P.J. Cobbert got a little intel to put in his back pocket this weekend after a slugfest of sorts with a handful of top teams from Georgia and Florida battling at the Danny Byron Invitational at Osceola High School.

“We got a bunch of young guys this year that have to be battle tested,” said Cobbert, whose Golden Eagles finished third behind Georgia powers Camden County and Woodland-Cartersville high schools. “I’ll take their efforts this weekend, put the information in my back pocket and gear our training to address what we saw. It’s all good and the boys wrestled tough.”

With Camden County dominating up top with 510 team points and Woodland-Cartersville finishing second with 244, Fleming Island took third with 195.5 in front of fourth place West Forsyth of Georgia. Region 1-3A foe Osceola High took fifth with 167.5 with Timber Creek sixth at 163.

“We got to see guys that are just plain tough wrestlers and got a little bit of our region,” said Cobbert, the defending region champion and 3A runnerup to South Dade the past two years. “Next week, we’ll see more region guys at Lyman High’s Bill Scott tournament and maybe 1A champion Lake Highland Prep.”

Taking seconds were Luke Chop at 152 to Camden 7A runneruup Tyler Dahlgren; Nick Janssen at 182 to Camden’s Rafael Wilkerson and Chad Nix at 195 to Camden 7A champion at 182 Myles Starke.

“Luke has improved a lot since last year and has become a team leader,” said Cobbert. “Nix is just a beast that has come here with a mindset to just batter people.”

At 120, Fleming Island 113 state champion Briar Jackson took third to first placer Kyle Gollhofer of Woodland-Cartersville, the 5A 120 champion who finished 2017 at 53-0, and runnerup Jaekus Hines of Osceola, second in 3A at 106 last year.

“He told me he is not in tip top shape yet, but he’ll see the Hines guy later in the year,” said Cobbert. “We keep wrestling this caliber of opponents only gets us better.”

One aspect of the Fleming Island effort that Cobbert cited as needing improvement was raw conditioning to finish tough, close matches.

“We’re going to run and lift more than usual at this stage so we can finish these matches and win them,” said Cobbert. “Pretty soon, these young kids will get tired of the seconds and thirds.”

Also in the gold rounds, at 106 Hunter Herrington took fifth with a win over Will Valach of Liberty; at 113, Riley Holton took fourth with a loss to Camden’s DeMarquis Hall; at 138, Dalton Williams took third behind Osecola’s other Hines, Malyke, a state champion at 132 last year, and Cole Cochran of Woodland-Cartersville; at 170, Gavin Smith took third with a win over Freedom’s Joey Kaminski; at 182 and Anthony Breeden, who lost his first match to teammate Janssen, took third with a win over Byrce Shedd of Woodland-Cartersville.