Young grapplers put on a showcase for CL legends

Mora Triangular
With the Wildcats leading 30-22 against Mora, freshman Adam Klick’s pin of Mora senior Tyler Reinkie at 220 with 11 seconds left in the match gave the Wildcats an insurmountable 36-22 lead. The Wildcats went on to beat Mora 36-28. The match between the Wildcats and Mora opened the Mora triangular, held Tuesday, January 21. Later in the evening, the Wildcats were crushed by second-ranked Foley 57-9. Three Wildcats each won a decision to account for the nine points by the Wildcats against Foley: Grant Brown (120), Aaron Sistrunk (126) and Joe Virga (170). Wildcat head coach Shawn Frederixon said “Foley ranked second in the state, so they’re pretty tough. Mora was a big win for us because it has section tournament seeding implications. We had some kids who needed to really step up and came through for us. It was a really tight dual. It was weird in that it didn’t seem like we were really that far ahead of them, but we kept pulling away. We moved Klick up to 220 and he came up with a big pin for us to seal it. He did a nice job.”

Chisago Lakes Legends Tourney
Mark Sontag (160) and Joe Virga (170) won individual championships at last Saturday’s Chisago Lakes Legends tourney, held at Chisago Lakes High School. The Wildcats finished third overall as a team. “A third place finish is pretty good in this one,” said Wildcat head coach Shawn Frederixon. “We were missing, for a variety of reasons, four of our regular varsity wrestlers. Simley is ranked number one in the state in Class AA and Park of Cottage Grove is a tough AAA team.”

Sontag, ranked ninth in the state in Class AA at 160, decisioned Carter Focht of Mahtomedi 3-1 to win the championship at 160. Focht is ranked fourth in the state at 160. Frederixon said, “That’s a good win for Mark and a good confidence booster going into sections.” Virga, who is still undefeated for the season and is ranked second in Class AA, pinned all three of his opponents. He pinned Cory Flaata of Park with ten second left in the match to win the title at 170. Flaata is ranked ninth in the state in Class AAA. “Virga beat a pretty good kid from Park,” said Frederixon. “He did what he’s been doing all along. He starts building a lead and keeps working at it till he puts the kid away. Joe is having a heck of a season. He’s already beaten Billy McClay of Princeton twice and McClay is ranked fourth in Class AA at 170. And he’s knocked off Cody Skog of Cambridge-Isanti, who is ranked third in Class AAA at 160.”

The Wildcats had four second place individual finishers at the tournament. In the championship match at 113, Teddy Pierce lost a 7-4 decision to Anthony Jackson of Simley, ranked seventh in the state. And at 120, Dylan Connell lost in the championship match to Collin LaBrosse of Park 3-2. LaBrosse is ranked fifth in Class AAA and Connell is ranked second in Class AA. In the championship match at 132, Kyle Schoenecker, ranked fourth in the state, was beaten 5-2 by ninth ranked Hunter Smith of Zimmerman. Jake Klein (285), was pinned in his opening match but came back to beat two matches to finish second for the day.

In dual meets so far this year, the Wildcats are 10-8 overall, 5-2 in Section 7AA and 2-4 in the conference, good for third place in the East Division. Tomorrow night, the Wildcats will participate in the ten team Mississippi 8 Conference tournament, the last big event before section tournaments begin. The meet takes place in Monticello and kicks off at 4 p.m. “It should be a lot of fun,” said Frederixon.