Jayson Ness pins his way through the Auggie Open

On No­vem­ber 21, I had the priv­i­lege of shoot­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta wrestler Jayson Ness pin his way through the Aug­gie-Brute-Adi­das Open at Augs­burg Col­lege in Min­neapo­lis, Minn. Ness — the sec­ond-ranked wrestler in NCAA Di­vi­sion I and three-time All-Amer­i­can — had no prob­lems with his Di­vi­sion II and III and NAIA opponents.

In the first round, Ness pinned un­at­tached wrestler  Mitch Spano (be­low) in just 40 sec­onds. Spano is a 2009 grad­u­ate of Wood­bury High School (Wood­bury, Minn.).

Jayson Ness pins Mitch Spano :40
Mitch Spano (right) dur­ing his match with Jayson Ness on No­vem­ber 21, 2009. Ness pinned Spano just 40 sec­onds into the first period.

In the next round Ness faced then ninth-ranked Ma­lik Stew­art of Dako­ta Wes­leyan (S.D.) (NAIA). Stew­art, who had pinned his op­po­nent in the first round, fell to Ness at the 2:03 mark of the first period.

Jayson Ness pins Malik Stewart at 2:03
Ex­cept for brief pe­ri­od of the match were Stew­art forced Ness to roll-through on his back, Ness main­tained con­trol most of the match. Here he takes a look at the clock be­fore try­ing to turn Stewart.
Jayson Ness pins Malik Stewart at 2:03.
Ness go­ing for the turn, which he even­tu­al­ly gets, stick­ing Stew­art at the 2:03 mark.

Up next for Ness was Augs­burg wrestler Paul Bjork­strand. Bjork­strand — who was at one time ranked eighth in the coun­try at DIII and is cur­rent­ly ranked tenth — made his re­turn to the Augs­burg line­up at the Aug­gie Open af­ter tak­ing a year off dur­ing the 2008-09 season.

Ness grap­ples with Paul Bjorkstrand.
Ness talks to a ref­er­ee af­ter his match with Paul Bjorkstrand.

In the fi­nals match, Ness was faced Up­per Iowa Uni­ver­si­ty’s Kyle Pe­dret­ti. Pe­dret­ti is the sixth-ranked wrestler in Di­vi­sion II and was the only wrestler at the Open to wres­tle Ness into the sec­ond pe­ri­od. Ness earned his pin at the 4:07 mark.

Ness works for a take­down on Pedretti.
Ness walks back onto the mat af­ter a blood timeout.
Ness grap­ples with Pedretti.
Ness coun­ters Pe­dret­ti’s ties.
Ness pre­pares to take a shot on Pedretti.
While most wrestlers don’t sur­vive long on their back with Ness, Pe­dret­ti man­aged to roll through.
How­ev­er, it was not long be­fore Ness got Pe­dret­ti into a bet­ter pin position…
…and goes for the pin, which he gets at the 1:07 mark of the sec­ond period.

Thanks for looking.

1 comment

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.