Simley's Nick Wanzek (red headgear) wrestles Watertown-Mayer/Mayer Lutheran's Joey Stadnick in the 2011 Minnesota Class AA 145 pound semifinal. Wanzek enters the tournament ranked 14th in the nation at 152 pounds.
Sparta travels to Kasson, Minn. this weekend for the Bob Swalla Memorial Duals hosted by Kasson-Mantorville. The tournament features two nationally ranked teams in Simley (11th) and Kasson-Mantorville (43rd). For comparison’s sake, Kasson-Mantorville is ranked one spot ahead of Luxemburg-Casco who beat Wisconsin Rapids 33-29 earlier this year. Rapids does not show up on the national rankings. It’s definitely a competition upgrade from the Rochester tournament Sparta competed in and won the past two years.
Nationally ranked wrestlers at the tournament include Simley’s Jake Short (5th at 145), Simley’s Nick Wanzek (14th at 152), Jackson County Central’s Cooper Moore (9th at 170) and Kasson-Mantorville’s Broc Berge (17th at 195).
State ranked teams at the tournament include Simley (1st in MN Class AA), Kasson-Mantorville (4th in MN Class AA) and Jackson County Central (1st in Minnesota Class A) and Centennial (11th in Minnesota Class AAA). The tournament packs state ranked wrestlers too. 41 to be exact if you count Sparta’s six ranked Wisconsin wrestlers. It’s going to be a tough tournament.
In total there will be ten teams and they are Byron, Centennial, Jackson, Lewiston-Altura, NRHEG, Simley, United South Central/Alden-Conger, Waseca, Fairmont, and Sparta. Last year Simley defeated Kasson-Mantorville 41-21 to win the tournament. Jackson County Central defeated Zumbrota-Mazeppa 42-36 for third and Stewartville defeated Centennial 40-28 for fifth. Full dual results from last year can be found by clicking here.
Did you miss ordering team and individual photos this year? Maybe a relative wants a few pictures or maybe you’d like some reprints? That’s possible now with the addition of the 2011 middle school and 2011-12 high school team and individual pictures to online galleries. Click the two links below to browse the galleries and make orders. The links will always be available under the “Photos” link at the top of the page.
Note: If you don’t see your middle school wrestler in the online gallery, that’s because I have only uploaded those photos I edited. There were almost 70 wrestlers getting their picture taken this year so to save time I only edited photos of those wrestlers I received orders for. If your kid was at picture day, just drop me a note and I’ll upload it to the gallery.
Sparta used eight forfeits to cruise to a 75-3 victory over La Crosse Central Thursday night. The dual was a far cry from Central teams a decade ago that won back-to-back MVC titles. Now, they can’t even put a full team on the mat. The one bright spot for Central was Ben Thornton’s victory at 113 over John Roddick. Thornton is the top ranked wrestler at 106 pounds in division one and was a state runner up last year.
Results from last night’s dual are below…
120 – Brock Polhamus pinned James Werner (La Crosse Central) 3:01
126 – Tristan Zurfluh won by forfeit
132 – Derek VonRuden won by forfeit
138 – Paul Vantassel tech falled Koy Rolff (La Crosse Central) 16-0
145 – Michael Murnane won by forfeit
152 – Toby Mosley pinned Arthur Hoglund (La Crosse Central) 1:56
160 – Bob Ragan won by forfeit
170 – Greg Skon won by forfeit
182 – Kyle Burkhalter won by forfeit
195 – Dan Dawley won by forfeit
220 – Logan Degenhardt won by forfeit
285 – Michael Beeler pinned Peter Medinger (La Crosse Cenral) 3:45
106 – Justin Marx major decisioned Josh Kuhse (La Crosse Central) 9-1
113 – Ben Thornton (La Crosse Central) defeated John Roddick 8-1 SPARTA 75 – LA CROSSE CENTRAL 3
The Spartans won’t have such an easy road Saturday when they head to the Kasson-Mantorville duals in Kasson, Minn. Waiting for them is the top ranked Class AA (equivalent to D2 in Wisconsin) team in Minnesota as well as the 4th-ranked team. Full preview to come later.
Quote from Joe Russel, coach at George Washington and former Minnesota Gopher assistant: “Wrestling is a tough sport physically and mentally. Often time people look only to the raw physical skills, technique, power, endurance. I love watching the mental part of the sport – the battle of wills. Who will back down first? Who will concede out of fear of failure, fear of fatigue? Who is willing to take a risk? What is the strategy used to win a situation? The sport can resemble a chess match at times. The sport can also look like an old fashioned gladiator battle. The sport is fascinating.”
One of the great things about wrestling is that you get to see and follow people like Anthony Robles.
While looking up some information for a future blog post, I came across this from 2009. Can you count how many of these middle schoolers are now wrestling varsity?
Not much has changed in the rankings since we last updated you. In the Wisconsin Wrestling Online team rankings, Sparta continues to be ranked 9th in division two. The Crossface rankings, which haven’t been updated since the middle of December, still have the Spartans as an honorable mention despite finishing almost 20 points ahead of [...]
Here are 127 photos from yesterday’s action in Sparta. Again, congrats to the Spartans on their team title. 2012 Spartan Invite – Images by Derek Montgomery
Sparta won their own invite for the first time since 1997 by putting six guys into the finals to finish 6.5 points ahead of Iowa-Grant and 84.5 points ahead of MVC rivals Holmen. Neillsville finished third with 193 points, Desoto fourth with 135 and Holmen fifth with 127. Leading the way for the Spartans were [...]
We succeeded in getting a live stream of the Spartan Invite. Check it out below for the rest of today’s action on the center mat, which will include the semifinals and finals later this afternoon. We plan on doing this for all the home duals going forward. Since this is out first foray into live [...]
Sorry about no preview yesterday. I was busy replacing all the pants whose crotch I tore while shooting weddings last year and more importantly, getting everything setup so that we can live stream the Spartan Invite finals later today. The finals should start between 6pm and 7pm and we’ll have a better idea as the [...]
Below is a photo gallery from last night’s dual. We’ll have a short preview of the Spartan Invite later today and we are still working on seeing if we can live stream the finals of the invite tomorrow. Keep checking back here for details on that or on Sparta Wrestling’s Facebook page. For now, here [...]
