Loka’s win helps Hodags secure Mosinee dual

Sometimes, in high school wrestling, a team’s greatest ability is availability.

That was the case for the Rhinelander High School boys’ wrestling team Tuesday night as, despite winning only one contested match, it took advantage of enough forfeits in Mosinee’s lineup to come away with a 40-36 victory in a GNC dual meet in Mosinee.

Mosinee filled only seven weight classes on the night, giving Rhinelander six forfeit wins to go along with a double forfeit at 120 pounds. Though the Hodags were unable to fill three weight classes, the extra points were enough to swing the dual in their favor.

“I’m not necessarily too proud of that win, but when you can fill the weight classes, that’s part of the job,” Hodag coach Scottie Arneson said. “Tonight was more so showing our younger guys why having guys that can fill weight classes is important — in our conference, especially.”

Given the forfeits, the math worked out that Rhinelander needed to win only one of the five contested matches to walk away with the dual meet victory. While Mosinee earned pins in the other four, the swing match proved to be Ivan Loka’s bout against Mosinee’s Jacob King at 132.

Loka found himself trailing 5-2 in the first period after giving up the opening takedown and then trading reversals with King. Loka fought off the bottom in the second period, getting a reversal and four back points to go up 7-5. He added a take down and another four-point near fall in the third period before giving up a late reversal as he held on for a 15-7 major decision.

“Ivan showed some good fight tonight. He ended up getting a major decision for us ended up deciding the dual meet. That was a 10-point swing if they would’ve won that match,” Arneson said. “He put himself in different positions in the match that he came off and he said that did not feel good. I was like, ‘No, it didn’t look good either, but you found a way to win and that’s what’s important in those situations.’ The thing is, he feels like he didn’t wrestle well, and he was still able to come up with a win because he out-hustled somebody, and that’s something that we’re really preaching. Wins and losses, they’re gonna take care of themselves, but the one thing that we can control is if we outhustle people, and he certainly did tonight.”

Noah Monk (113), Gage Anderson (157), Noah Leisure (165), Brayden Krieg (175), Dawson Sachse (190) and Brock Sternitzky (285) all collected forfeit wins for the Hodags, while Mosinee got forfeit wins from Aiden Herman (144) and Dakota Olson (215).

Mosinee’s pins came from Eli Yang over Juan Diego Grage at 106, Jordan Feit over Michael Tredupp at 126, Cohen Iczkowski over Hoyt Dantoin at 138 and Andrew Beatty over Anthony Boldt at 150.

Rhinelander improved to 2-3 in the GNC with the victory while Mosinee fell to 0-4.

Wausau East Invite

The Hodags were 14th Saturday in the 19-team Lumberjack Invite in Wausau. Rhinelander competed with 11 wrestlers in the invite, most of whom finished in the top eight in their respective weight classes.

“It was certainly a better day of competition. I think we carried it over from (a win over Medford last) Thursday night into the weekend,” Arneson said. “It’s been certainly a while since we’ve been able to fill as many weight classes as we have and have two good days of competition together. For us, especially not being able to have practice yesterday, and coming out and competing hard like we did today was certainly an awesome thing.”

Boldt had the best day for the Hodags, winning three of his four matches to place fifth at 150. Bouncing back from a loss to eventual meet winner Trevor Trowbridge of Auburndale in the quarterfinals, Boldt pinned Lakeland’s Spencer Krieg in the consolation semifinals and then defeated Appleton North’s Carter Hudson in the fifth-place match by major decision, 15-3.

“Tony had an awesome day. I think today was his first ever podium finish,” Arneson said. “The hard work is definitely getting put together here for his senior season. He feels really good. He closed out a couple matches in the third period and was able just to get the positions that he knows that he can score in and, not exert so much energy that we’re killing ourselves on the end of the matches.”

Loka and Anderson both went 2-2 on the day to finish seventh at 132 and 157, respectively. Loka’s day included a pair of pins and Anderson got a third-period pin of Wittenberg-Birnamwood’s Aydrean McGeschik in the seventh-place bout. 

Tredupp and Sternitzky also recorded two wins each as Tredupp took ninth at 120 and Sternitzky was 10th at 285. Hoyt Dantoin won his last match of the day to finish seventh at 138 while Avrom Barr won his first match of the day before scratching out of his remaining matches due to injury as he took eighth at 144.

Monk (sixth, 113), Elias Puza (seventh, 165) and Grage (ninth, 106) all went winless on the day. Krieg was 1-2 and finished 13th at 175 while Leisure took 14th at 157 with one win.

Rhinelander went 6-3 in placement round matches on the day, which Arneson said was a positive sign.

“If you can win your last match of the day, you can leave the tournament at least feeling pretty good about yourself,” he said.

The Hodags closed out the dual meet portion of their schedule in a GNC match against Antigo and a non-conference match against Clintonville, both of which took place Thursday in Antigo after press time for today’s edition. Rhinelander’s next tournament will be the GNC Meet in Medford Saturday, Feb. 7.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].