Great effort, but Raiders settle for GNC tie
MEDFORD WRESTLING
After their Feb. 1 wrestling dual meet went down to the last match before Medford won it 39-37, it was expected the Raiders and Tomahawk Hatchets would also be battling point-for-point at Saturday’s Great Northern Conference tournament in Mosinee.
Were they ever. When the points were tabulated and corrected, the Hatchets emerged as Saturday’s winner by a mere four points, 420-416, meaning the two long-time rivals are sharing the championship for the second straight year. In both cases, Medford went 5-0 in the duals, but the Hatchets took the tournament.
While there was disappointment in the result, it was minimized by how well the team wrestled and how much the young Raiders have improved in the last two months.
“I thought we did better than we did on (Feb. 1),” Medford head coach Brandon Marcis said. Marcis has coached Medford to at least a share of five GNC titles in his six seasons. “We always say take it out of statistics or the ref’s hands. The fact that it was that close, you know, whatever. I preach to the kids not to worry about the outcome but to worry about the process. Don’t become too much of a fan just become a competitor and just train and focus on the things you can control. I thought we did that very well. I thought we improved across the board and had so many good things to build on. The fact that the points were the way they were, it is what it is. At the end of the day I was not disappointed with our performance. That’s pretty much across the board. We had a great tournament. We really did.”
Medford led the six-team conference with five weight-class champions and added two runners-up and two thirdplace finishers. The Raiders won seven of 13 head-to-head matchups with Tomahawk and both teams had the same number of pins.
“You want to control the controllables and then you want it to be like water off a duck’s back for the uncontrollables,” Marcis said. “We were doing really good at finishing our shots and finding a way to keep our hips in and our heads up and hitting knee slides. I thought all of those were really good. We were focusing on our offense and what we do well rather than worrying about what the other guy does. We did so good on all of those things. We made gains.”
The five champions
Medford’s GNC champions for 2021-22 are junior Thaddeus Sigmund, who earned his second title, sophomore Jude Stark and freshmen Gage Losiewicz, Owen Higgins and Paxton Rothmeier.
Sigmund, who was last year’s 106-pound champion, found himself in just a three-man bracket this year at 113 pounds. He didn’t break a sweat, pinning Mosinee’s George Ahles in 39 second and Tomahawk’s Jack Derleth in 22 seconds.
Stark, a third-place finisher last year at 120 pounds, took the three-man 126-pound bracket in similar fashion, pinning Rhinelander’s Tanner Schmidt in 39 seconds and Tomahawk’s Andrew Tollefson in 46 seconds.
“I told them that’s a sign of the respect,” Marcis said. “You look at 106, some of the tougher guys jumped down there and you look at 120, some of the tougher guys jumped there or to 132. I know Thad and Jude were a little disappointed they didn’t get to wrestle as much, but that’s just a sign of the respect that you’re getting from other competitors that don’t believe they can beat you.”
The titles for Higgins and Rothmeier didn’t seem possible in December when they weren’t even in the varsity lineup.
Higgins steamrolled his way through the five-man bracket at 120 pounds, pinning Mosinee’s Chris Strejc in 52 seconds, Lakeland’s Ashton Bremer in 3:44, Rhinelander’s Kyle Wiese and, in the title bout, Tomahawk’s Addison Peissig in 1:59.
“Owen Higgins is just wrestling like a man on fire,” Marcis said. “He told me he’s just not caring. He’s just wrestling. It’s perfect. He wrestles free, he wrestles loose and then he’s pinning guys. He just turned it on halfway through the season.”
Rothmeier also notched pins in all four of his matches, taking care of Mosinee’s Jackson Folwarski in 3:35, Lakeland’s Tyson Skubal in 5:14, Rhinelander’s Sean Boman in 1:12 and, in the title bout, Tomahawk’s Blake Felser in 3:20. He dodged a bullet when Skubal got a first-period near fall and took a 7-0 second-period lead with a reversal. But Rothmeier got a second-period reversal to get on the board and then took care of Skubal in the third.
“His game on the feet is really coming around,” Marcis said. “His high crotch to a double is really smooth the way he’s making guys step. He’s finishing his shots. That’s really good for him. If you can win on the feet and get out on bottom, you’re going to win.”
Losiewicz continued his consistent success at 138 pounds, winning the fourman bracket with pins over Lakeland’s Joey Havican in 52 seconds, Rhinelander’s Robert Schramke in 1:02 and Tomahawk’s Ryan Larson in 56 seconds.
“He’s got a very methodical way to break guys down,” Marcis said. “Him and his dad (Chad) have a really good tactic once he gets on top. He just breaks guys apart piece by piece and pins them.”
More awards
Sophomore Logan Kawa earned his second straight All-GNC second-team honor with an excellent 4-1 day. He pinned Antigo’s Robert Hagerty in 1:15, Mosinee’s Eyan Manowski in 44 seconds and Rhinelander’s Anthony Barnett in 18 seconds. The last two matches were dandies. First, after giving up the first takedown to Lakeland’s Jerry Goselin, Kawa reversed him to tie the match at 2-2. Neither wrestler could escape in the next two periods, sending the match to overtime, where Kawa got to Goselin’s legs and took him down 50 seconds in to win 4-2.
That set up a title match with Tomahawk’s Logan Bishop, who also beat Goselin in overtime and beat Kawa 14-2 four days earlier. This time, Kawa got the first takedown. Bishop took the lead with a reversal and two-point near fall in the final seconds of the first period and led 6-2 going into the third. Kawa got within 6-5 but Bishop held on for a 7-5 win.
“I thought Kawa really dug out a great day,” Marcis said. “He beat that kid from Lakeland in the fourth round in overtime. Talk about finishing strong. I love those overtime wins. After losing to Bishop on Tuesday I told him you’re better than that. I don’t know how that kid beat you so bad because you are better than that. He came out and got the first takedown.”
Freshman Tripp Reamer was one of Medford’s best stories of the day, taking second at 195 pounds. He pinned Antigo’s Wyatt Beiber in 2:55, Mosinee’s Noah Meshak in 1:05 and Tomahawk’s Blake Younker in 1:04 before turning a 6-5 third-period deficit into a 10-6 win over Rhinelander’s Reid Schultz. That gave him a shot at the title against Lakeland’s Leonard Chosa, but Reamer was injured on a hard takedown and couldn’t finish the match.
“He got three pins and a decision,” Marcis said. “He just dug them all out. He did awesome. The thing about Tripp is he wants to be good. Part of wrestling is the mental game and his mental game right now is on fire because he believes that he can go with anybody. You have to be a believer and Tripp right now is a believer.”
Junior Wyatt Johnson got honorable mention for the second straight year, this time at 182 pounds by turning an 0-2 start into a 3-2 finish with a 53-second pin of Lakeland’s Tommy Howard, a bye and then a pin in 3:33 over Tomahawk’s Ethan Trayes.
Freshman Evan Wilkins was third in a four-man bracket and got honorable mention, finishing with a key 15-0 technical fall over Tomahawk senior Brayden Jones.
The rest of the bunch
The Raiders added to their point total with three fourth-place finishes and a fifth.
Sophomore Braxton Weissmiller was pinned three times before ending his day with a 34-second pin over Mosinee’s Teryn Walls. Sophomore Cory Lindahl, after two byes, wrestled an outstanding match, according to Marcis, in a 10-3 win over Antigo’s Jayson Arrowood. He then got pinned by the eventual champion, Rhinelander’s Lehman, in 52 seconds and Tomahawk’s Hudson Mattke in 5:26. Mattke, Lindahl and Arrowood actually tied for second, but Lindahl came out on the short end of the tiebreaking process.
Freshman Nicholas Malchow was pinned three times but also got a dominant 16-1 technical fall over Antigo’s Johnny Wissbroecker to take fourth at 106 pounds. Junior Blake Schilling went 1-4 to place fifth at 160 pounds. He beat Antigo’s Dontae Mohr 5-0 in his opening match.
Rhinelander was third in the team standings with 359 points, while Lakeland was fourth with 230, Mosinee was fifth with 211 and Antigo was sixth with 159. Rhinelander and Lakeland wound up tied in the overall standings for third, while Mosinee and Antigo tied for fifth.
Next up for Medford is the WIAA Division 2 regional meet, hosted by the Neillsville Co-op on Saturday, starting at 11 a.m. The top two wrestlers in each weight class will advance to the individual sectional meet in Amery Feb. 19. The top team will go to Somerset Tuesday for the team sectional.
The host team is the likely favorite and beat Medford 54-23 to start the season back on Dec. 2. Marcis, though, believes he has a much different time now and can’t wait to see how the Raiders fare in a tournament that also includes Abbotsford- Colby, Bloomer- Colfax, Chetek- Weyerhaeuser/Prairie Farm, Regis-Altoona and Spencer-Columbus.
“I keep telling the kids, you get a couple things go the right way, you become a believer and all of a sudden we’re wrestling next week in sectionals,” he said. “It can happen. If you believe it, that’s the first step. Now we have to work towards it.”
Medford’s 120-pound GNC champion Owen Higgins pins Lakeland’s Ashton Bremer at the 3:44 mark of their third-round match Saturday.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS
Medford’s Wyatt Johnson secures his third-place finish at 182 pounds during Saturday’s GNC tournament with this pin of Tomahawk’s Ethan Trayes in 3:33.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS
