Medford’s Rau, Sigmund get one more shot at state
WIAA DIV. 2 WRESTLING
Tough day overall for Raiders at Osceola
The fortunes of Medford wrestling took a positive turn when the class of 2020 arrived along with head coach Brandon Marcis in the fall of 2016.
Three Great Northern Conference and two WIAA Division 2 regional championships later, this chapter of Raider wrestling is down to one last weekend for two remaining competitors.
Jake Rau and Zeke Sigmund navigated the mine field that was the WIAA Division 2 Osceola sectional well enough on Saturday to make it to this weekend’s state competition at the Kohl Center in Madison. It’s the third straight state appearance for both. Rau goes in as a marked man having won last year’s state title at 220 pounds. At 145 pounds, Sigmund aims to close out his career with his first top-six podium finish.
“This year it is a little different,” Sigmund said Monday. “It’s weird knowing it’s my last shot at it, so I’m just going to go in guns blazing and give it my all.”
“This time’s a little different because you know it’s your last, so there’s a little bit more preparation and a different mindset going into it,” Rau said. “The matches are still the same, I’m still hoping for the same outcome. That stuff is all the same. It’s just the realization that it’s your last time.”
“I’m really excited for them and their opportunity,” Marcis said. “They’ve worked hard and they deserve it. They’ve put in the time outside of the regular wrestling season and it’s been a long career with them. I’m super excited for the weekend.”
Sigmund will take the mat tonight, Thursday, with a do-or-die first-round match against Kewaskum freshman Braeden Scoles (37-3). The winner gets a minimum of two more matches starting with a quarterfinal bout Friday against Portage sophomore Lowell Arnold (42-4).
As a sectional champion, Rau gets a bye into Friday’s quarterfinal round, where he’ll face either Appleton Xavier junior Mac Strand (27-3) or Beloit Turner senior Trey Griinke (40-4).
“For both of those guys, we don’t want to train for any one guy,” Marcis said. “We know what’s ahead and we have to take every match one match at a time. They both have experience down there, so they know what to expect. We’re going to work hard and do what we gotta do.”
Friday’s quarterfinals are expected to start at about 11:15 a.m. Consolation quarterfinals are slated to start at about 2:45 p.m. and the semifinals are set for 7 p.m. More consolation competition will take place Saturday morning and afternoon, followed by the championships at 5:30 p.m.
How they got there
The expectation in the 220-pound weight class was that the top two ranked wrestlers in the state would meet in the finals and that’s just how it played out.
Rau had little trouble in his first two rounds, pinning St. Croix Central junior Josh Bair in 1:33 and Ellsworth sophomore Kyle Anschutz in 3:50, while Neillsville-Greenwood- Loyal freshman Gunner Hoffman got two first-period pins.
Hoffman handed Rau his only two losses of the season in a Dec. 19 dual and at the regional meet, but this time, Rau got the key takedown and escapes he needed to earn a 4-3 win. The sectional title is the first of Rau’s career.
“I just knew I had to be a little more protective on my feet,” Rau said. “He’s got a really good shot. If I block that, it’s not going to be a big scoring match. It’s hard to hold him down because he is really strong to get out, so it’s a lot of technical work on the feet. That’s not my strongest position but I make do with what I got.”
“We had a good plan for him,” Marcis said. “We know that Hoffman is strong. We always had to make sure we were in a good low stance. We don’t want his head to get below ours and we followed that plan except for the time he got through on us. Jake’s really good on bottom. He’s really good at peeling hands and getting hand control so he’s out right away. It kinda goes that way for both guys. It ends up being a battle on the feet. Maybe we’ll catch him and put him on his back, which is what we hope for. But there are positions we know we want him in. So we just practiced on getting him in those positions. If we get him there enough times we’ll capitalize on it.”
Rau (35-2) said he’s looking forward to getting the first-round bye at state. Though never one to worry too much about opponent scouting reports, he said it will be helpful to see what his potential quarterfinal foes have when they meet Thursday night.
The 220-pound bracket certainly won’t be an easy one. Along with Rau and Hoffman, Antigo’s Nick Roller, who Rau beat in the Great Northern Conference championship match on Feb. 8, comes in as the third-ranked wrestler in the bracket. Fourth-ranked Marcus Orlandoni of the North Fond du Lac co-op (38-2) could face Rau in the semifinals.
“I try to take it one match at a time,” Rau said. “(Hoffman) kinda told me on the podium, ‘see you Saturday night.’ But state’s a different ball game. I took third at the sectional last year and ended up going all the way to the finals and ended up winning it, so anything can happen and anybody can beat anybody.”
Rau said last year’s title has long been put in the rearview mirror. The only thing that matters now is leaving Madison this weekend with no regrets.
“I think it helps personally just because of that whole you know it’s going to be over,” Rau said. “You want to leave everything out on the mat. You don’t want to be 30 or 40 years old realizing I should’ve done this differently. Whatever the outcome is I want to know that it’s because that’s the way it is and I wrestled my hardest down there. ... I know the work I put in is going to get me somewhere. If it’s on the top of the podium, then that’s where I belong.”
Sigmund had to work his way through the consolation bracket on Saturday to get back to state. He got a scare to start with, falling behind Osceola’s Aaron Schmidt 4-0, but he regrouped and pinned the senior in 4:34. That set up a semifinal match with undefeated junior Jared Stricker of Ashland. Sigmund had a late 3-2 lead and nearly had what he felt would be a clinching near fall. But Stricker wound up reversing him late and winning the match 4-3. Stricker (44-0) went on to beat Amery’s Walker Ingham 9-4 in the final.
“He took me down and we went out of bounds and I looked over at coach and he just signaled for me to just clear my head and I can come back from it,” Sigmund said. “I got a quick reversal on him then, late in the third, I had him on his back but not quite long enough to get the near fall. I was trying to push too hard for the near fall because I didn’t want to go into overtime. I pushed too hard and that was a mistake and he ended up turning me and getting a reversal on me.”
“I thought he wrestled Stricker really good,” Marcis said. “I thought he gave it his all in that match. We just didn’t quite get the calls our way. We always say don’t leave it up to the ref. In that case it was just a close match. I thought maybe he could’ve had a near fall there. But we’re not going to make excuses. He’s still going to state.”
Sigmund (40-6) clinched third place and punched his state ticket by rebounding with a pin in 4:41 over Ellsworth’s Braden Matzek and a 14-0 major decision over Bryce Blaken of Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau/Melrose-Mindoro, who had beaten just four days earlier at the team sectional. Sigmund got a second-place wrestleback against Ingham, but Ingham won 3-0.
“It wasn’t my best day but I enjoyed having to come back and prove that I deserve to be down there again and that I put in the work,” Sigmund said. “At the end of the day, it was worth the work.
“(The Stricker loss) kinda sparked a fire underneath me,” he added. “It got me going. I didn’t like that. I’m not sure what happened (against Ingham) but I felt a little off. I don’t know if it was because I already had the mindset that I was going, which isn’t always the best thing. But I feel like if I faced him again, I’d be able to take him.”
Scoles, Sigmund’s Thursday opponent, carries the state’s number-two ranking into the meet, while Arnold is third, so the Raider senior knows nothing will come easy. Ingham is also on his side of the bracket. Stricker and top-ranked Aidan Medora (26-1) of St. John’s Northwest Military Academy are on the other side.
“My main goal is to hit the podium, but the ultimate goal is to win the title,” he said.
The rest of the results
For seven more Medford Raiders, Saturday marked the end of their seasons as they were unable to crack the top three spots in their weight classes.
“It wasn’t a picture perfect day,” Marcis said. “I think everyone’s story is a little bit different. I think from top to bottom they were in tough brackets. I think if you’re not 110% ready and got the eye of the tiger, someone else will pass you up and maybe that happened in a few situations.”
Juniors Carson Church and Emett Grunwald finished one win shy of advancing to their first-ever state tournaments.
At 132 pounds, Church (25-5) got off to a great start with a 13-3 major decision over Prescott’s Sam Murphy. Eventual champion Sawyer Best of Bloomer-Colfax (46-1) beat him 7-0 in the semifinals. Church quickly pinned Barron’s Mason Ecklor in 1:18 to reach the third-place match, but Ellsworth senior Bailey Poellinger (30-15) controlled things from start to finish, winning 9-0.
At 152 pounds, Grunwald (35-12) lost a 2-1 heartbreaker in his opening match to Ellsworth senior Carter Huppert (33-7), but Huppert’s semifinal win gave Grunwald a wrestleback opportunity. He stayed alive by beating Spooner-Webster’s Brandon Meister 11-6. But in the third-place match, Grunwald was beaten for the second straight weekend by Payton Kostka (40-3) of Regis- Altoona, the eventual second-place finisher, by a score of 9-2.
At 138 pounds, senior Dane Higgins was gunning for a fourth straight trip to Madison, but he never really got on track Saturday. Higgins (35-8) survived his opening match with a 5-3 sudden victory over Ashland’s Isaak Livingston. That set up a semifinal match against Higgins’ nemesis of recent years, Charlie Stuhl of Ellsworth. Stuhl rolled to a 13-2 win and went on to win the title. Higgins was then upset by Baldwin-Woodville freshman Hunter Gartman (20-16) by a score of 9-6, ending his career with 130 wins. He finished sixth at state last year at 132 pounds.
Junior Dalton Krug (26-20) pinned Hayward-Northwood’s Calvin Mansheim in 1:59 to advance to a 195-pound semifinal bout with Amery sophomore Kale Hopke (37-3). Hopke pinned Krug in 5:20 and wound up taking second. Krug’s day then ended with a 17-9 loss to Luke Fischer (33-10) of the Osseo-Fairchild co-op, who ended up taking fourth place.
At 126 pounds, senior Eric Rehbein (27-14) lost 11-2 to eventual champion Jordan Bonte of Baldwin-Woodville (30-5) in his first-round match. Bonte’s semifinal win gave Rehbein another match, but his run ended with a 5-2 loss to eventual third-place finisher Evan Wolfe (39-8) of West Salem-Bangor.
Senior Clay Bowe had a tough end to his run as a Raider in the 182-pound bracket. He was pinned in 5:16 of his first-round match by Bret Kostka of the Osseo-Fairchild co-op. When Kostka (6-4) lost his semifinal match to eventual champion Blaine Guthrie of Baldwin- Woodville, Bowe’s day and career ended. The GNC Wrestler of the Year closed his career with 79 wins.
Freshman Ty Sova (23-13) lost his only match at 106 pounds 7-2 to Nolan Johnson of the Luck Co-op. Johnson’s semifinal loss eliminated Sova. Freshman Luke Dux of the Neillsville Co-op won the bracket.
“For some of those guys their careers are over,” Marcis said. “For some of those guys, like Ty and the juniors, it’s just starting. But for those seniors, it’s all about the journey that wrestling gives you and the lessons that it teaches you. No matter how your last match ended, I really think that the life lessons will stick with them forever and ultimately that’s what it’s about.”
