Armstrong leaves Sea Kings

Senior Tucker Armstrong, a CIF State championship contender, has left the Corona del Mar High wrestling team before the season and is back in Ohio, Coach Gary Almquist said in an e-mail Tuesday morning.

Armstrong, whose transfer to CdM from nationally ranked Graham High in St. Paris, Ohio during his junior year created a stir, wrestled six times for the Sea Kings last season.

He never lost a match and captured the 130-pound Pacific Coast League championship.

Armstrong missed the postseason last year with the Sea Kings after he traveled to Ohio, where a family member passed away in February, causing him to miss the CIF Southern Section Coastal Division individual tournament.

Armstrong was Corona del Mar’s best hope to win an individual state title for the first time since 1976, when Spyro Kemble accomplished the feat at the school. Armstrong won the Ohio State Division II 125-pound championship as a sophomore wrestler for Graham.

If Armstrong competes in his senior year in Ohio, it will be for his fourth school in as many years.