CONTINUING TO GROW

MEDFORD WRESTLING

Young Raiders settle for co-GNC wrestling title

Sophomores Thaddeus Sigmund and Ty Sova decisively clinched individual championships in the final round of the Great Northern Conference wrestling tournament in Rhinelander, while the Medford Raiders had to settle for a coconference championship after Tomahawk won the team aspect of Saturday’s meet.

With five champions, the Hatchets scored 425 points and distanced themselves from Medford’s 382 points to pull into an overall tie for the 2020-21 championship with the Raiders, who were a perfect 5-0 in the GNC duals.

In the GNC’s point system, Medford and Tomahawk both finished with 20 team points during their successful seasons, well ahead of the rest of this year’s pack.

This winter’s abbreviated wrestling season now turns to the WIAA postseason which, for the Raiders, begins Saturday morning with Division 2 regional competition at Eau Claire Regis.

“It is a bummer tying Tomahawk for the conference championship after being undefeated in the duals and then taking second at the tournament,” Medford head coach Brandon Marcis said. “But all things considered there’s a lot of successes to focus on rather than focusing on the negative. Nothing good comes from being a pessimist. We’re going to take the good and look forward to regionals. Overall the day was decent.”

The top two wrestlers in each weight class Saturday will advance to sectional competition Feb. 6 in Neillsville. Regis-Altoona, Abbotsford-Colby, Bloomer-Colfax, the Neillsville Co-op, Spencer-Columbus and Stanley-Boyd will provide Saturday’s regional competition.

As for the conference meet, the Raiders had a solid day with 10 of 13 wrestlers earning All-GNC awards, with many of them being on the younger side.

“A lot of the kids made some gains,” Marcis said.

The conference titles were the first for Sigmund and Sova.

Sova came up just short last year at 106, but this time at 113 pounds he wasn’t to be denied in the round-robin competition. After a first-round bye, he pinned Rhinelander’s Kyle Weise in 1:09, earned a 4-0 win over his toughest foe, Addison Peissig of Tomahawk and then pinned Mosinee’s Jackson Folwarski in 16 seconds and Antigo’s Sam Bretl in 3:36 to seal an 8-1 season in offi cial conference competition.

“I thought Ty looked really good,” Marcis said. “He was moving on his feet. I thought he was looking for the pin every time he took a guy down. He seemed really focused. That’s one thing about Ty is if he feels like he can get the job done, he’s going to get it done. Technically I thought he was really good in collar ties. He was really good at being on the elbow on the collar ties and having a short neck. That’s one thing we always talk about when you get in those situations. I’m proud of his effort. It was really good.”

In his first GNC tournament, Sigmund wrestled in a three-man bracket at 106 pounds. He finished a 9-0 GNC season with a 59-second pin of Antigo’s Daniel Livermore and a 9-0 major decision over Tomahawk’s Presley Gutbrod in what amounted to the championship match. Sigmund set the tone in that match with a five-point takedown and near fall combination right off the bat and he kept himself in good position the rest of the way.

“That was pretty cool for him,” Marcis said. “I thought he wrestled really well. His arm bars on top seemed to be working pretty good. He was able to get arm bars on both of his kids. I’m super happy for him to be a conference champ. I look for big things to come out of him in the future.”

Seniors Carson Church and Emett Grunwald came up one win shy of repeat championships.

At 138 pounds, Church, last year’s 132-pound champion, drew a highly-anticipated rematch with Mosinee’s Chase Kmosena, a three-time champ coming in and last year’s 126-pound winner, in the final round. Church won a Jan. 7 matchup 5-2, but this time, Kmosena got the match’s only takedown with 44 seconds left to take a 3-2 win. Church nearly had a tying escape with 16 seconds left, but he was ruled to have been out of bounds. He had taken a 2-1 lead by escaping with 1:37 left in the third period.

After a first-round bye, Church had no problem with his next three opponents, pinning Antigo’s Seth Beaber in 1:10, Lakeland’s Logan Strasburg in 55 seconds and Tomahawk’s Micah Arnott in 32 seconds.

“Obviously we wanted to win and we lost a tight one to Kmosena who went on to be the Wrestler of the Year in the GNC,” Marcis said. “We knew it was going to be a good match. We just didn’t get to take as many shots as we wanted to on the feet. I thought as far as the match went, Church kinda controlled most of the ties in the match, but Kmosena just kept it close and scored his points at the right time. We just couldn’t get out there at the end.”

Grunwald looked to defend his 152-pound title from a year ago against last year’s 160-pound runner-up Logan Bishop of Tomahawk in the title bout. The match was scoreless until Bishop powered to a five-point takedown and near fall with 15 seconds left in the opening period. Grunwald got through on a shot to Bishop’s legs in the second period to pull within 6-2, but Bishop escaped and in the third period he got the pin at 5:16.

Earlier in the day in the four-man bracket, Grunwald pinned Mosinee’s Andrew Nievinski in 1:43 and took a 7-2 decision over Lakeland’s Zane Grams.

“With Emett, we’re just going to keep working on shooting from the tie up,” Marcis said. “He likes to shoot from space. We just have to keep building on shooting from the tie, which will be a big focus for us for him. Other than that, he still wrestled good. He wrestled the Lakeland kid well.”

Freshman Logan Kawa had an opportunity to win the 170-pound title after pinning Tomahawk’s Ethan Trayes in 1:35 and Mosinee’s Noah Meshak in 56 seconds and holding off a tough opponent in Lakeland’s Jerry Goselin 8-5. That set up a championship match with Antigo’s Josh Heuss, last year’s 160-pound champion. Heuss won another title with a 6-1 victory.

“That last match he wrestled the Antigo kid, who’s a full 170, a senior and he’s very strong, and Kawa wrestled him really good,” Marcis said. “He wrestled through positions, stayed aggressive.”

Five Raiders earned honorable mention with third-place finishes.

Freshman Cory Lindahl had a chance to win the 132-pound championship going into the final round. He drew a bye then pinned Rhinelander’s Robert Schramke in 1:02 and Tomahawk’s Hudson Mattke in 1:03 while also getting a big pin over Antigo’s title contender Logan Edwards in 4:29.

Lindahl got a quick five points against Lakeland’s Brady Abb, but Abb reversed him and got a near fall as well to tie the match at 5-5 after one period. Lindahl got an early escape in the second period, but Abb’s takedown and pin forced a threeway tie for first place. The tiebreaker criteria gave Abb the title, Edwards second place and Lindahl third.

“Cory Lindahl had an awesome day,” Marcis said. “It was really unfortunate that he lost the tiebreaker there at the end. I was watching from another mat when he was wrestling Logan Edwards from Antigo, who I figured to be the toughest kid of the day for him. He pinned him. One thing I really like about the way he’s been wrestling is he’s been finding ways to get in on the legs and stay aggressive.”

Senior Dalton Krug went 3-2 in a tough 195-pound bracket, pinning Mosinee’s Zach Owens in 1:09, Antigo’s Jacob Dettman in 32 seconds and Lakeland’s Leonard Chosa in 2:36. Tomahawk standout and eventual champion Kade Wenninger pinned Krug in 3:30 and Rhinelander’s Ben Sinclair got him in 1:20.

At 220 pounds, Wyatt Johnson was off to a good start with pins in 2:42 over Mosinee’s Teryn Walls and in 2:12 over Rhinelander’s Conner Jensen. But eventual runner-up Landon Saglin of Lakeland controlled the fourth round match 9-4 and champion Marcus Matti pinned Johnson in 1:27.

At 145 pounds, junior Kayden Dassow got third place with two byes and a pin in 57 seconds over Antigo’s Ezekiel Fobes. He was pinned in 3:20 by runner-up Logan Johnson of Mosinee and lost 13-3 to champion Mason Evans of Tomahawk.

At 120 pounds, freshman Jude Stark got two byes and a pin in 2:38 over Tomahawk’s Ryan Larson. He was pinned in 3:18 by champion Tim Fox of Rhinelander and gave runner-up Ben Nemcek of Lakeland all he could handle despite tweaking his knee in the match, but Nemcek came away with an 8-5 win.

Oscar Hinderliter went 2-3 and took fourth at 160 pounds. He pinned Tomahawk’s Braydon Jones in 5:09 in the last round and was an 11-3 winner over Lakeland’s Tommy Howard in the first round. In between, he was pinned in 26 seconds by champion Gage Coppock of Mosinee and put up two good fights in a 5-2 loss to runner-up Cayden Neri of Rhinelander and a 6-4 loss to third-place finisher Gideon Sass of Antigo.

“His first match kinda stuck out to me against the Lakeland kid,” Marcis said. “Oscar had to cut him and get another takedown to get more team points and he did it. That was a big victory for the team when he did that.”

Itsael Medina Fuentes was a 13-9 winner over Lakeland’s Jerome LaBarge while taking fourth at 126 pounds. He got a bye and lost 13-7 to Tomahawk’s Blake Felser. He was pinned in 3:04 by Antigo’s Chris Mackey and 1:33 by champion Hugh Weise of Rhinelander.

At 285 pounds, Braxton Weissmiller, giving up about 50 pounds to his opponents, got two byes to finish fourth. He was pinned in the first period by Rhinelander’s Owen Kurtz, Tomahawk’s Eric Decker and Antigo’s Hunter Cordova.

“It would’ve been nice to win everything outright, but sharing the conference championship is a small victory,” Marcis said. “ We’re always looking toward the future. We’re trying to never be satisfied. We’ll just keep that same attitude and stick with the program.”