The annual Cony Duals tournament is drawing quite a crowd.
Cony, Morse, Gardiner, Skowhegan, Erskine Academy, Mt. Ararat, Winslow, Madison, Westbrook, Oxford Hills and Mt. Blue are scheduled to compete in the event, which is Saturday.

Teams are divided into three pools of four teams each. Each team wrestles the other teams in the pool. The teams are then ranked based on the results of pool competition before they advance to a championship round against teams in the other pools.

There will also be a “composite” team formed from junior varsity wrestlers of teams involved due to a school withdrawing from the competition, according to Cony coach Shawn Totman. This will allow for the 12-team format to remain intact.

“I would say Skowhegan is the favorite to win,” said Totman. “They have a team that has a number of high quality wrestlers. However, Cony, Erskine, Westbrook, Mt. Ararat and Oxford Hills all have competitive teams that could rise to the challenge. I think the pool part of the tournament is going to be exceptional this year. It should be interesting with so many teams that are pretty much equal in talent and numbers.”

Wrestling will start at 9 a.m. and will continue throughout the day on four mats.
• • •
Skowhegan’s senior standout, Tyler Craig, became the first wrestler in the program’s history to win 100 matches by pin. With the two wins, Craig raised his overall career win total to 156.

Julian Sirois and Kam Doucette, both juniors, each earned their 100th career victory during the evening.

The three will lead the Indians into Saturday’s Cony Duals. Skowhegan is the favorite to win the team trophy.
• • •
Tristen Ripley was a tenacious wrestler while at Mount View High School. Ripley was a three-time state place-winner and was the first wrestler in school history to eclipse the 100-career win benchmark, according to coach Hamilton Richards. Now Ripley is using that same tenacity in the pursuit of a medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine.
“Tristen is a hard worker,” said Richards. “He always put in the effort on the mat and in the classroom. He also did the extra work to give him the edge as well. Tristen has always had the ability to juggle multiple things at once and do well in most all of them. He’s disciplined and capable of developing the necessary regimens to achieve success.”

Ripley says he set his sights on becoming a doctor at an early age.

“I knew I wanted to become an MD since about junior year of high school,” said Ripley. “I had always loved the medical aspect of things when it came to science and biology, so I figured medicine would be a good fit for me.”

While his vision of his future was crystal clear, his journey has been anything but typical. Ripley opted to attend University of Maine at Augusta and praised his experience at the school.

“At UMA, I made it known that I wanted to go to medical school and the faculty, in particularly my Biology professor, worked extremely hard to get me into a great diversity of classes to strengthen my application,” Ripley said. “During the latter end of my freshman year, I got selected to go to Haiti as part of UMA’s global health program, where I worked at an orphanage and clinic for a week and got to know a lot about treating patients in a rural setting. With this and many other unique classes, I applied my sophomore year for the Tufts Maine Track Early Assurance Program. I interviewed the spring of my sophomore year and after a summer of organic chemistry got the notification that I had been selected as one of three people to get into the program.”

Ripley, currently a freshman, says he is planning on entering internal medicine, general surgery or family medicine.