-Angela Camper
Earlier this month, on April 6 and April 7, 2024, two local wrestlers from the Pleasant View area, competed on Team Tennessee Black, an AAU Middle School wrestling team, at the 2024 Lee Pamulak MS National Duals tournament in Des Moines, IA.
Tyler Knight and Ruger Pennington placed third at 80 lbs and first at 130 lbs respectively, in the Tennessee MS AAU State Tournament in March to earn the opportunity to compete on the Tennessee National Duals team. Tennessee took two MS teams to the tournament to compete, Tennessee Black and Tennessee Red.
The tournament was comprised of 20 middle school teams from eight different states: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Tennessee. The 20 teams were divided into four pools for pool play where the first and second place teams from each pool competed in the gold bracket, third and fourth-place teams from each pool competed in the silver bracket, and fifth-place teams from each pool competed in the bronze bracket.
Tennessee Black took first place in their pool play with a 4-0 record to place them in the gold bracket. Tennessee Red took third place in their pool play with a 2-2 record to place them in the silver bracket for the tournament. Tennessee Red went 1-2 in the silver bracket to finish in fourth place; Tennessee Black went 4-0 in the gold bracket to finish first overall. It was the first time in the past 20 years that a Tennessee team has won this middle school nationals tournament.
