March 2009

Former Sparta wrestler Jenna Ahnen was recently featured in an article in the La Crosse Tribune.  Ahnen, now a sophomore at UW-La Crosse, has become one of the top players on the Eagles' softball team and in the entire WIAC.  At week's end she was hitting .464 with two triples, a .538 on-base percentage while going 8-for-8 in stolen base attempts this year.

The article is below, but can also be found by clicking here.

Ahnen (above) takes care of business at regionals in 2007.  Below, the face of her Holmen opponent is pretty close to the same face opposing pitchers are making this year after facing Ahnen, who is now a shortstop for UW-La Crosse.

From pins to putouts
By JOEL BADZINSKI | jbadzinski@lacrossetribune.com

Jenna Ahnen is proud of her small chapter in area sports history.

Ahnen
was a four-year varsity wrestler at Sparta High School, where she
competed exclusively against boys, and finished her career with a
second-place finish at the United States Girls Wrestling Association
national meet.

“I still get recognized,” Ahnen said of her time as a prep wrestler.

But
these days, Ahnen is focused on playing for the UW-La Crosse softball
team. If she keeps it up, people might forget all about the wrestling.

Ahnen,
a sophomore, has started all 20 games at shortstop and leads UW-L with
a .464 batting average, two triples and a .538 on-base percentage. She
is also 8-for-8 on stolen base attempts and has one home run and 14 RBI.

Even
though Ahnen has been a starter since the beginning of her freshman
year and is a big reason why the Eagles are 15-5 this season, she is
not ready to declare herself a finished product.

“I don’t know everything,” Ahnen said. “I’m just a sophomore.”

UW-L
coach Chris Helixon watched Ahnen as a softball player and wrestler
during her senior year of high school. He was already projecting her as
a starter for the Eagles.

“Just from recruiting her, I could
tell,” Helixon said. “She’s very athletic and has a big range. I saw
her field ground balls on the other side of second base. I also saw her
wrestle in high school and you could see she had mental toughness.

“I knew as a freshman she would be mature enough to handle playing in college.”

Ahnen
started 40 of 41 games in 2008 and batted .365 with three homers, 15
RBI and 15 stolen bases. Defensively, she had a .900 fielding
percentage, including 14 errors, which she wasn’t happy about.

“Last
year, I did well, but I had a lot of errors,” Ahnen said. “A lot of
them came where we’re at now, at the halfway point. This year, I have
two (errors) so I feel I’ve improved.”

During UW-L’s
doubleheader sweep of Viterbo on Thursday, Ahnen, had four hits, scored
three runs, drove in a run, stole a base, and threw a runner out at
home to preserve the shutout in the second game.

“She can drop a
bunt down for a hit, or hit it out of the park,” Helixon said. “As a
baserunner, she’s very opportunistic. Any slight mistake and she’ll
take the extra base.”

Ahnen considered wrestling in college —
she had some scholarship offers from women’s programs — before
committing to UW-L to play softball.

“Wrestling helped me
tremendously as an athlete because it requires so much determination,”
Ahnen said. “I’m glad I went with softball. I love the girls here and I
love UW-L.”

{ 0 comments }

While it didn’t go in Sparta’s favor this year, fans of Sparta and Tomah wrestling alike can now relive the 2009 dual for the MVC championship. 

The entire dual is available for you to watch below.  It’s a new feature that we hope to expand upon in the future.  I’m pretty sure we will put up the entire Sparta-Tomah dual each year because it ends up being one of the most anticipated duals of the year.  However, should Sparta and Holmen find themselves in a dual that will decide the conference title then we will try to do the same for that–basically any big matches.

You can view the dual below…. or click here to see it at Vimeo.com…

Please let us know if there are any issues viewing this video. 

{ 0 comments }

If any of you have tried to access the schedule and results page for this past season along with many of the records, you might have been redirected to www.derekmontgomery.com

That's because those files were hosted on my old photography website and I just launched a new one this past week and in the process, visitors to the old website get automatically forwarded to that new address.  I thought that would work just for the front page, but apparently applies to all the other pages as well.  What does that mean for you?

That means for the next week or so that information will not be accessible.  I'll be migrating those files and pages over to a new host this week so you might have to change your bookmarks.  I'll let you know when that migration is complete and the links on the left side of this page will reflect that.  For now, you can just check out some of the photos on my new website.

The look and feel of Spartanwrestling.com will also be changing soon.  The web address will stay the same, but we will be moving to a blog that operates on WordPress as opposed to Typepad.  WordPress blogs are much more customizable, which will allow us to bring you new features, more videos and generally display more information on the page making your experience much richer and easier.  This won't happen for at least a month and probably longer than that, but when it does you'll notice right away.

A variety of new content will also be added to the website soon thanks to Pat Stevenson.  Lots of historical information, old articles and more will be scanned, uploaded and added to the website.  Be sure to check that out as there is a lot of fascinating information.

Finally, later today we will be providing a link to something that many of you out there who don't live in Sparta will really appreciate.  Hell, even those of you who live in Sparta and go to all the matches will probably enjoy this too.  It's something that we plan on doing every year for now on and this will simply mark the beginning.  I'm not going to spill the beans just yet so check back here later today, but I can say it's one of the most exciting additions to the website in years and hopefully will mark the beginning of something great.

{ 0 comments }

Of the 3,678 wrestlers competing at eight regional sites around the state of Wisconsin, seven from Sparta finished well enough to advance to the state youth tournament that will take place on March 27th and 28th at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI.

On March 14th in Westby, Brett Von Ruden, Luke Wendorf, Alice Todryk, John Roddick, Brock Polhamus, Brage Pfaff and Corey Zimmerman placed first or second in their division of the regional qualifier.  Below is a photo of the state-bound wrestlers…

Front Row From Left:  Brett Von Ruden, Luke Wendorf and Alice Todryk   ::  Back Row From Left:  John Roddick, Brock Polhamus, Brage Pfaff and Corey Zimmerman

Here's how the seven placed individually…

• Brett Von Ruden  –  1st Place at 72 pounds, 98-99 birth year
• Luke Wendorf  –  2nd Place at 66 pounds, 00-01 birth year
• Alice Todryk  –  1st Place at 45 pounds, 00-01 birth year
• John Roddick  –  1st Place at 73 pounds, 96-97 birth year
• Brock Polhamus  –  2nd Place at 88 pounds, 96-97 birth year
• Brage Pfaff  –  2nd Place at 75 pounds, 00-01 birth year
• Corey Zimmerman  –  2nd Place at 67 pounds, 96-97 birth year

If you can make it down to the Alliant Energy Center, it's not only a good chance to see the future of Sparta wrestling, but also the future of what will likely be many of the top names in Wisconsin wrestling just a few years down the road.  Again, that tournament is March 27th and 28th at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI.  You can find more information about the tournament by visiting the website of the Wisconsin Wrestling Federation.  Click on Tournament Information across the top once you get there and then click State Tournaments in the drop down menu and then click one more time on Kids Folkstyle State.  You can find even more information on that page by clicking on the "2009 Regional Results and Qualifiers" link.

Be sure to check back here if anything else for results from the upcoming Kids Folkstyle State Tournament.

==========

Check back here later tonight and this week for some updated historical records that were brought to us from Pat Stevenson.  Pat has been doing a lot of hard work digging up information to help us complete some holes in our records from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.  Also from Pat is a quiz he created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Spartan Wrestling program, which happened to be this year–something that had slipped my mind.  I know… my bad. 

However, with the 50th anniversary and Pat's hard work, we will be able to bring you a variety of new content and a quiz over the next few days that we hope you will be able to enjoy.

{ 0 comments }