Bryan L. Fuell
\nThe Virginia Gazette<\/p>\n
Most of the land is desert or semi-arid. It covers a diverse range of habitats, from koala bears to tropical rainforests.<\/p>\n
A stark contrast from Williamsburg, Lafayette High wrestler James Lipford recently traveled to Gold Coast Australia as part of the International Down Under Wrestling Competition July 5-16.<\/p>\n
The group spent eight days in Australia and three days in Honolulu, Hawaii, on the way home.<\/p>\n
“It was an unbelievable experience, and it was pretty cool to wrestle a lot of guys from other different countries, “said Lipford, who is headed to Virginia Commonwealth University to study computer engineering.<\/p>\n
“I saw things that I will probably never get the chance to see again.”<\/p>\n
Lipford was nominated by his high school wrestling coach to be part of this great experience, from his past successes on the mat in high school.<\/p>\n
He represented Team Northeast, which included wrestlers from Wisconsin (7), Minnesota (2), New Jersey (1), New York (1) , South Carolina (1) and Virginia (1).<\/p>\n
The competition consisted of three parts ” Beach Wrestling, Individual International Tournament and the Team Dual Tournament.<\/p>\n
In the Individual Tournament, Lipford finished fourth, and Team Northeast took third place overall. Several of the wrestlers from the United States were state qualifiers and\/or state place winners from their respective states.<\/p>\n
Each wrestler is coached by his individual team coach, but competes as an individual in the tournament.<\/p>\n
“James is a great kid and a good competitor on the mat, said Team Northeast wrestling coach Matt Hill. “He wrestled some very tough competition and was able to hang right with them.<\/p>\n
“I would give anything to have a team of James Lipfords. He is a great kid with a big heart”\u00a6 a very nice kid on and off the mat, “Hill continued.<\/p>\n
The event is sponsored by International Sports Specialists Inc., an organization that has sent athletes to Australia for the past 18 years.<\/p>\n
This summer between 1,500 and 2,000 athletes from the United States have traveled to Gold Coast Australia to compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bryan L. Fuell The Virginia Gazette Most of the land is desert or semi-arid. It covers a diverse range of habitats, from koala bears to tropical rainforests. A stark contrast from Williamsburg, Lafayette High wrestler James Lipford recently traveled to Gold Coast Australia as part of the International Down Under Wrestling Competition July 5-16. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling","category-beach-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-AL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}