HALFWAY TO THE TITLE

MEDFORD WRESTLING

Six pins seal key dual win over the Hatchets

The Medford wrestlers couldn’t have asked for a much better first six matches. The same could be said for Tomahawk in the next seven during Tuesday’s dual meet between Great Northern Conference co-leaders.

While Tomahawk may have had momentum and a 37-33 lead going into the 14th and final bout, the Raiders had a big ace up their sleeve with their season leader in wins Thaddeus Sigmund taking the mat in the 113-pound match. He came through, pinning Hatchet freshman Jack Derleth in 30 seconds to seal Medford’s 39-37 win.

The team victory gives Medford a two-point lead over the Hatchets in the GNC standings heading into Saturday’s conference championship tournament in Mosinee. Barring something unforeseen, Medford and Tomahawk should be the top two team finishers. Medford would claim the undisputed title by finishing ahead of the Hatchets. But, like last winter, Tomahawk can earn a title share by winning Saturday’s meet, which starts at 10 a.m.

“We’ve been in this position and it’s a primer for our ultimate goals,” Medford head coach Brandon Marcis said. “We have a young team. We want to do big things. Conference is great. We want to celebrate and win it. We have half of it so far. We have to get the other half and anything we can get beyond that. That’s our focus.”

“We’re excited, very excited,” Sigmund said.

The cards played out right for Medford from the random draw for an opening weight to the opening coin flip, according to Marcis. The Raiders won the matches they had to and got pins in all but one of them, which wound up being huge.

“It was a focus in practice, getting pins and not getting pinned,” Marcis said. “We spend a little bit more time on that part of wrestling before we wrestle Tomahawk because it always comes down to bonus points. Two points, right?”

“This is big,” Sigmund said. “Tomahawk is always a big deal.”

The meet started at 120 pounds with Tomahawk having to present its wrestler first. The Hatchets sent junior Addison Peissig and Medford countered with steadily-improving freshman Owen Higgins. The two battled to a scoreless stalemate through two periods, though Higgins had to scramble to avoid a potential near fall just before the second period ended.

The third period started with the wrestlers in neutral positions. Higgins took a shot and it paid off with a stunning pin at 4:37.

“It was going off pretty slow and then he was kind of pressuring into me so I tried to get an ankle pick out of it,” Higgins said. “Then he was still going so I just tried to throw something at him and got the head throw.”

Tomahawk then bumped up freshman Andrew Tollefson to face Medford sophomore Jude Stark at 126 pounds and Stark stuck him in just 1:03 to give the Raiders a quick 12-0 lead.

“(Peissig) was supposed to be wrestling Jude,” Higgins said. “Jude beat him last year so they moved him down to me, thinking maybe they’d have a closer match against me. I guess it is (motivation), but really it’s just another match.” “Owen can hang in there and I think that he’s pretty dangerous with his arm bars,” Marcis said. “With his long arms I think he’s dangerous on top. I like our odds with Owen Higgins there.”

For a wrestler who wasn’t in the varsity lineup until about a month ago, the win certainly was one of the biggest moments of his freshman year so far.

“At the beginning of the year it was really slow,” he said. “I wasn’t even on the varsity for the first half. But then it started to pick up as I was getting used to it. I just started going out there not really caring about anything but just wrestling.”

Another emerging young Raider, Paxton Rothmeier, got a big one as well, controlling senior Blake Felser in a 9-2 decision at 132 pounds. It was a 2-0 match going into the third period when Rothmeier spun out of Felser’s control and reversed him to go up 4-0. The wrestlers then traded reversals and Rothmeier finished it by putting Felser to his back for a three-point near fall.

Gage Losiewicz pinned Ryan Larson in 1:34 at 138 pounds, Cory Lindahl stuck Hudson Mattke in 1:48 at 145 pounds and freshman Evan Wilkins got a big pin over senior Brayden Jones in 4:52 at 152 pounds to put Medford up 33-0.

“I think a lot of our younger guys are buying into just performing and it’s just another chance to go out there and wrestle,” Marcis said. “I know they were hearing a lot about us versus Tomahawk, the rivalry. They were announcing this was the 75th match and who’s ahead in the series. It’s a big rivalry, but it’s a good dual and that’s it.”

Despite the good start, the Raiders knew they hadn’t hit the strength of Tomahawk’s lineup yet. That started at 160 pounds where Mason Evans pinned Blake Schilling in 42 seconds. Logan Bishop took a 14-2 major decision over Raider Logan Kawa at 170 pounds, but the fact that Kawa stayed off his back, allowing just one first-period near fall, was crucial.

Micah Arnott pinned Raider Wyatt Johnson in 3:38 at 182 pounds and in a tense 195-pound match that featured several blood-time stoppages between Raider Tripp Reamer and Hatchet Ethan Trayes, Trayes came out a 4-3 winner after getting a debated stalling point with 32 seconds left and the winning escape just after that.

Jacob Kaminski pinned Medford’s Braxton Weissmiller in 1:37 at 220 pounds and state-ranked Marcus Matti took a forfeit at 285 to pull the Hatchets within 33-31.

The Hatchets then made a switch, presenting Presley Gutbrod, last year’s All-GNC second-team 106-pounder as its choice for the 106-pound match against Raider Nick Malchow. Gutbrod pinned Malchow in 31 seconds, but that left Derleth to face Sigmund in the decisive final match, and it was no contest.

“I knew I had to move as fast as I could. Get what I could get,” Sigmund said. “That first shot right there. It was just there.”

“(Derleth) was actually a 106-pounder, so that was even better,” Marcis said. “He’s small. Thaddeus is ripped. He’s a big 113. I really liked our chances.

“This was a team win,” he added. “If you looked at our bench, they were in it. I mean the whole gym was into it. Everybody’s in every match and I just think that with these kids, it’s fun to win but they’re just having fun period. That’s the good part of it.”

Medford 48, Lakeland 19

Medford set up Tuesday’s dual-meet championship by taking care of host Lakeland 48-19 on Thursday night.

The T-Birds actually led the meet 19-9 through seven weight classes, but the Raiders swept the last seven bouts to handily win the meet.

The run started with a forfeit win for Malchow at 106 pounds. Sigmund followed that up with a pin in 1:19 over Justin Funmaker at 113 pounds to give Medford a 21-19 lead. Higgins won a key match at 120 pounds, defeating Ashton Bremeer in a 7-2 decision. Stark’s 28-second pin on Devon Semrad at 126 pounds gave the Raiders a 30-19 edge.

Medford finished things off with three straight pins.

Rothmeier got the first one, sticking Tyson Skubal at 3:54 in the 132-pound match. Losiewicz ended what had been a good match by pinning Brady Abb in 4:25 at 138 pounds. Lindahl stuck Jerome LaBarge at the 1:05 mark at 145 pounds to end it.

Reamer got a nice win at 182 pounds, edging Tommy Howard 2-1 and Kawa took a forfeit at 170.

Lakeland scored the meet’s first 10 team points when Zane Grams earned a 13-4 major decision over Wilkins at 152 pounds and Patrick Grams pinned Schilling in 2:23 at 160. Leonard Chosa won, arguably, the best match of the dual with an 11-9 overtime win over Johnson in the sudden victory overtime period at 195 pounds.

Esaube Brown pinned Raider Weissmiller in 1:27 at 285 pounds. There was a double forfeit at 220.

Owen Higgins