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A Fantastic Season

Author: Teddy Burch
Issue: 2008 March

Competing at the State Championships has always been a dream for Shawnee High School senior, Dusty Topping.

Recently, at the Oklahoma State Finals, Topping placed second in the 130-pound weight category. This completed a fantastic regular season where Topping finished with a record of 33 wins and only three losses.

Tammy Topping, booster club president and Dusty’s mother, had nothing but praise for her son’s second place finish. “It was a wonderful season. This is something that he has always wanted to do,” she said. “I think, to finish second, is just great. There are a lot of wrestlers that would have loved to finish the season second.”

In order to compete in the state finals all wrestlers must compete in the regionals. The state is divided into an east and a west region, and Dusty competed and won the west region.

“Only the top four places at the regions go on to state,” said Tammy. “So to win the region and go on to state is just great.”

Dusty competed at the state finals as a freshman, but as a sophomore and junior he just missed the state finals, finishing fifth both years at the regional levels.

Dusty has been wrestling since kindergarten. His dad volunteered as his elementary coach, and his younger brother, John, is the photographer for all of Dusty’s matches. “You could say that we are a wrestling family,” Tammy said.

Dusty has yet to decide on whether he is going on to wrestle in college or to pursue another dream. “He is still deciding, but he has ideas of studying at Oklahoma State and becoming a veterinarian,” she said.

Another program that Dusty is affiliated with is Shawnee City League Wrestling, a program that introduces younger children to wrestling before the middle school years.

“It is just a great program,” said Tammy. “And Dusty, who has been an assistant coach for several years, is now a head coach for the program, for the children for Jefferson school.”