GNC WRESTLING MEET - Three champions highlight strong day for Raiders
GNC WRESTLING MEET
Barring something drastic, it was a given the Tomahawk Hatchets, with the deepest roster of any team, were going to clinch the season championship at Saturday’s Great Northern Conference 2025 wrestling tournament hosted by Lakeland.
The race for second, however, had some intrigue.
The Medford Raiders made a run at it, getting three weight class champions, two runners-up and two third-place finishers. That wasn’t quite enough to catch Mosinee, who secured second place in the meet and in the overall standings with a team that doesn’t have quantity this year, but does possess quality with the wrestlers it does have.
The Raiders finished with 289 points, while Tomahawk, with three champs, had 457 and Mosinee had 319. The Hatchets secured 22 team points overall in the GNC’s team scoring system to claim the outright championship. Mosinee, tied Medford at 2-3 in the GNC duals, finished with 14 points and Medford had 12.
Lakeland, who was 0-5 in the duals, shot up to fourth place in Saturday’s meet with 245 points, though that wasn’t quite enough to get the Thunderbirds out of last place overall with six points. Rhinelander and Antigo, who both went 3-2 in the duals, slipped to fifth and sixth Saturday with 243 and 230 points. They finished fourth and fifth in the overall standings and had one champion each.
“I think we did about as good as possible,” Medford head coach Brandon Marcis said. “I said at the beginning of the season there’s going to be an end of the season storyline about the growth that we’ve had. We had it (Saturday). Three champs, that’s pretty good.
“Mosinee just has several good kids. They’ve turned into more of a tournament team. They had more champions (six) than anybody else.”
Topping Medford’s story list Saturday was senior Paxton Rothmeier, who won a tough four-man bracket at 175 pounds with three pins. In his first match, he quickly took down Tomahawk’s Kaiden Kapellusch and, after taking him down a second time, he pinned him at 1:58. Rhinelander’s Logan Schwinger moved down to 175 after going 4-0 at 190 in the GNC duals. Rothmeier took him down twice and pinned him at 1:51. Finally, in a rematch with Antigo’s Nolan Kielcheski, who beat Rothmeier 15-4 on Jan. 23, Rothmeier got an early takedown, a twopoint near fall and got the pin as the first period was about to expire at 2:00.
“Paxton Rothmeier had a hammer of a bracket and pinned his way through it which is pretty incredible,” Marcis said. “Those are ranked wrestlers. The fact that he went out there and took care of business was, I think, shocking to everybody.”
It’s Rothmeier’s second GNC title. He won at 132 pounds as a freshman and was second in his brackets the past two years.
Parker Lissner also won his second GNC title Saturday. Dropping down to 144 pounds after wrestling the rest of the season at 150 or 157, Lissner won a fiveman pool, earning an 11-5 win over Tomahawk’s Zander Zehner, earning an 18-3 technical fall at 4:44 over Lakeland’s Seth LaBarge, taking a 17-2 technical fall over Antigo’s Seth Medo and then beating Rhinelander’s Anthony Boldt 5-0 thanks to a second-period reversal and thirdperiod takedown.
“Parker Lissner showed his senior pride,” Marcis said. “He got his second conference championship and he’s just on a roll period. If you look at his last 12 matches or so, I think he’s won probably 10 or 11 of them. He’s on a roll.”
Lissner was the 138-pound champion two years ago. He was the 144-pound runner-up last year.
Sophomore Jordan Lavin won his second GNC title. Last year’s 120-pound champion won this year’s 126-pound title by tiebreaker after winning three of four matches. He pinned Mosinee’s Mason Fleming in 45 seconds and then dominated Lakeland’s Charlie Ernst 17-2 in a first-period technical fall.
Lavin was upset in the fourth round when Rhinelander’s Ivan Loka pinned him at 4:24. Lavin was leading 15-2 at one point in the second period. In his last match with Tomahawk’s Harmon Hoffman, Lavin turned a takedown and an escape into a 4-3 lead through two periods. He got a reversal to start the third and held on 7-5. Lavin, Hoffman and Ernst all had one loss, but Lavin beat both to win the tiebreaker and secure the title.
“He wrestled good,” Marcis said. “He did drop a match. He got a little complacent there, but he ended up winning the tiebreaker there to still be the champ. He beat the people that mattered. He can ride the momentum on that. When Jordy is on I believe that he is a state caliber wrestler.”
After earning honorable mention at 113 pounds last year, senior Nick Malchow moved up a spot, taking second at 120 pounds. In a full six-man pool, he went 4-1 with quick pins over Rhinelander’s Grady Debay in 42 seconds, Tomahawk’s Zack Larson in 36 seconds and Antigo’s Mason Walrath in 1:33. Malchow was pinned in 4:45 by Lakeland’s Evan Hastreiter and lost by technical fall 16-0 to champion Jackson Nechuta of Mosinee. Malchow, Hastreiter and Larson all were 3-2 for the day. Malchow won the tiebreaker for to get second, while Larson was credited with third and Hastreiter got fourth.
“Nick in his senior year has kind of stepped into that brawler role a little bit,” Marcis said. “He’s never out of it. He’s been wrestling physical. It may hurt to wrestle him. The chips are falling into place for him. He could be one of those stories.”
Sophomore Ayden Tyznik earned his first All-GNC wrestling award by placing second at 113 pounds. His three wins came with pins over Rhinelander’s Trevor Denton in 2:31, Lakeland’s James Stelzel in 2:55 and Tomahawk’s Dawson Jones in 1:59. With a chance to win the title with an upset, Tyznik lost an 18-0 technical fall to Mosinee’s Kory Resheske, though he did take the match the distance.
“Tizzy wrestled well all day,” Marcis said. “He ran into a little bit of a problem there at the end with the Mosinee kid. But he still wrestled good. He kept his elbows in, his head up and didn’t take bad shots. He’s just wrestling good.”
Freshmen Ashton Noland and Ian Stickney got honorable mention awards by taking third at 190 and 215 pounds.
Noland got two pins and a bye for his wins, sticking Antigo’s Caleb Vandenlangenberg in 5:21 and Lakeland’s Kenny Thompson in 2:53. Two early takedowns and near falls put Noland behind Thompson 12-2 in the first period. He got an escape, takedown and near fall to get within 12-10 by the end of the period, got the go-ahead takedown early in the second and finished it.
In a four-man bracket, Stickney got third place by pinning Lakeland’s Zac Amershek in 20 seconds in the day’s last round.
“Ashton Noland went into the tournament 0-5 in the conference and ends up being 3-2 on the day and earns honorable mention all-conference,” Marcis said. “The kid has grit. He never gives up. He just does what it takes to get the job done. Ian Stickney got honorable mention all-conference. They just did very well. I’m pretty proud of them.”
Corey McVicker placed fourth at 132 pounds as he got a wild 19-18 win over Lakeland’s Landon Gray-Ives. He got the last seven points in the final 15 seconds with a takedown and near fall.
Domanic Spencer was fifth at 138 pounds, getting a win by medical forfeit over Antigo’s Owen Medo. Levi Zuleger was fifth while bumping up to 150 pounds from 144 and Forest Hartl was fifth at 285 pounds.
Feeling like they’re peaking at the right time, the Raiders will take their best shot and see where the chips fall at Saturday’s WIAA Division 2 Hayward regional. The 13-team field includes all of the GNC teams except Antigo. Hayward-Northwood, Chetek-Weyerhaeuser/ Prairie Farm, Abbotsford-Colby, Rice Lake, Spooner-Webster, Northwestern and Ashland round out the field. The top four wrestlers in each weight class advance to the Feb. 22 sectional at Amery. The top two teams will compete in Tuesday’s WIAA Division 2 team sectional at Medford’s Raider Hall, which starts at 6 p.m.
“I told the kids we’re peaking, we’re going to beat kids we’re not supposed to and we did (Saturday),” Marcis said. “With the work that they’ve put in and the challenges that they overcame, I just think the sky’s the limit, especially for the young guys. For the older kids coming into February I think we’re doing the right things and we have the right attitude right now to make some things happen. Maybe in a lot of weight classes we’re not the favorite to win coming up, but I think we can see that storyline. We can be the guys that people are talking about.”
Girls at Merrill
On Friday, Medford’s Avery Losiewicz won the 132-pound championship and Bridget Wesle was eighth at 138 pounds in the Central Wisconsin Women’s Wrestling League Finale held at Prairie River Middle School in Merrill.
The two combined for 47 points to put Medford 10th out of 19 teams in the tournament, which was won by Merrill with 259 points, 10 more than Tomahawk and 20 more than Wausau West. Lakeland was a distant fourth with 93 points.
Losiewicz never went past the first period in pinning her way to the 132pound title and improving to 32-7.
The top seed in a bracket of 11 wrestlers, she drew a bye into the quarterfinals, where she pinned Wausau West’s Briana Leigh Gutowski in 33 seconds. The pin came even faster in the semifinals, where Losiewicz pinned Jaidyn Calmes of Wausau West in 20 seconds. Madelynn Lee, who is 26-10, nearly got to the second period, but Losiewicz turned a takedown and a near fall into a pin at 1:53.
Wesle competed in a 138-pound bracket of nine wrestlers. She was pinned in 1:06 by Merrill’s Caroline Durbin in the quarterfinals and pinned in 2:59 in the consolation semifinals by Wausau East’s Brynnley Seefeldt. Wesle forfeited the seventh-place match to Kay Robinson of Wisconsin Rapids.
The Raiders will open the post-season Friday at the WIAA’s Merrill regional. Competition is set to start at 4 p.m. at the Merrill High School fieldhouse with the top four finishers in each weight class advancing to the sectional meet at Ladysmith on Feb. 21.
“With the girls we have the same attitude,” Marcis said. “We don’t care who’s across from us. We only care about what we’re doing. I honestly think both girls are capable of going to the state tournament. Maybe Bridget has a little bit harder road being more inexperienced than Avery. But I do think it’s in her. She has to believe in it. Avery I think just needs to find that final gear, that final full throttle because she’s so talented and she knows so much good technique that she just needs to go out there and pull the trigger and I think she can beat anybody in the state.”
Medford’s Paxton Rothmeier lifts Rhinelander’s Logan Schwinger off the mat during their 175-pound match that ended with a pin by Rothmeier Saturday at the GNC tournament hosted by Lakeland. Rothmeier won the 175-pound championship with three pins. BOB MAINHARDT/NORTHWOODS RIVER NEWS
Parker Lissner
Nick Malchow
