December 30, 2019 at 12:02 p.m.
RHS wrestlers take 16th at Northern Badger
RHS wrestlers take 16th at Northern Badger
The Hodags saw five of their 11 wrestlers qualify for the placement rounds and finished seventh in Division 1, and 16th overall, in a 39-team field.
Walker Hartman led the way with a fifth-place finish at the 170-pound weight class. Tim Fox was sixth at 113, Hugh Wiese took seventh at 120, Trevor Knapp was 10th at 220 and Ben Sinclair finished 11th at 195. Wrestlers had to make their way through Friday's preliminary matches with no more than one loss to be one of the 12 wrestlers in each weight class to advance to Saturday's placement rounds.
"I thought it would be a pretty big challenge for us, and it was, but I thought we really represented well and did well there. Getting five of the 11 to place was pretty big and another good opportunity to wrestle ranked, tough kids," Hodag coach Paul Ellenbecker said. "We're pretty happy with how the weekend went and how things went overall."
Hartman went 5-1 in the tournament, his only loss coming in his last match Friday against No. 1 (D2) Carter Paulson of Rice Lake, who went on to finish third in the tournament. Hartman scored three pins in the placement rounds on Saturday, stopping Boyceville's Nick Hillman, Clear Lake's Ivan Ruble and Neillsville's Nathe Buchanan to wrestle back to fifth.
"Walker took fifth in an absolutely loaded bracket. That was probably the toughest weight class in the whole tournament," Ellenbecker said. "Just to get to that fifth-place match he had to beat two ranked kids and he pinned both of them kids. The match he lost was to the No. 1-ranked D2 kid. He just gave up some easy points early in the match and kind of put him into a bad spot.
"Walker's still getting better and he's a competitive kid where he doesn't really care who's next. He wants to wrestle, he wants to compete and he wants to get better. Ultimately, all these tough matches he's getting right now are putting him in position for the big stage in February."
Like Hartman, Fox got to the quarterfinals, before he lost to Clear Lake's Dominic Leintz, who ended up second overall at 113. Fox scored a pair of pins in Saturday's wrestleback before losing to Bloomer/Colfax's Luke Blanchard 5-2 in the fifth-place match.
"Tim had a good tournament," Ellenbecker said. "He really wrestled in that consolation bracket coming back. I believe he got two pins. For Tim, the big thing for him is going to be to find a way to put matches away. Usually he's a pretty fast starter, but he's got to keep scoring points."
Ellenbecker said Wiese, a second-year wrestler, may have been the story of the tournament for the Hodags as he reached the quarterfinals at 120 and was an overtime match way from wrestling for fifth place.
"You can't really say enough about the way Hugh competed this weekend," Ellenbecker said. "It was pretty amazing to watch a kid who's in his second year, who didn't win a match at the tournament last year, come back and take seventh and almost get in that fifth-place match ... It says a lot about how his ceiling is so high in this sport."
Both Sinclair and Knapp lost in their second matches on Friday and had to survive two rounds in the consolation bracket to make it to Saturday. Knapp scored a pair of wins on Saturday to finish 10th while Sinclair bounced back from a pair of pins on Saturday to get a pin of his own in the 11th-place match.
"Ben and Trevor just need a little more consistency," Ellenbecker said. "Trevor's maybe had 100 matches and he's probably wrestling some kids who have wrestled 500 matches in their life. We got a lot of ground to catch up on with those guys, but the tools are there."
All 11 wrestlers Rhinelander brought to the tournament won at least one match. The Hodags finished ahead of the only other GNC school in the field, Lakeland, which placed 20th overall.
Rhinelander returns to action Jan. 9 as it travels to Tomahawk for a GNC dual.
"We're going to take some days off here, give some guys a rest," Ellenbecker said. "It's been a grind. It's been a nice, enjoyable grind so far but the month of January and February is going to be pretty action-packed every weekend for us."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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