Wrestling places third at state

With three individual state champions, the wrestling team finished third at state on

By Submitted by Travis Keal

After placing third at the state tournament, the wrestling team poses for a picture

Tanner Smith and Aiden Burke
March 2, 2021

The wrestling team finished third at state on Saturday, Feb 27. Three wrestlers won individual state titles: seniors Brodie Scott, Caiden Casella and Ethan Kremer who placed first in the 195, 220 and 285-pound weight classes, respectively. In addition, another seven wrestlers placed in the top eight of their respective weight classes. 

For Scott, winning an individual state title allowed him to reach his goal.

“It’s what I’ve been looking forward to my whole high school wrestling career.” Scott said. “To go undefeated and end on a win feels amazing.”

Wrestling coach Travis Keal was happy with the team’s performance.

“I thought we wrestled hard,” Keal said. “5A is a really tough division and our kids battled and fought all day. At the end of the day, we came home with a third place trophy which is really something to be proud of.”

Scott attributes a lot of his success to the team around him.

“Everywhere except in the actual match wrestling is a team sport,” Scott said. “Without good practice partners, it’s hard to improve. Without support from friends and coaches, you won’t succeed.”

With the difficulty of the year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Keal was happy that the team was even able to wrestle.

“Coming into the season, with all the COVID protocols I was just hoping that we could wrestle some,” Keal said. “We didn’t know what it was going to look like, or if we could even get there. We had some struggles early, and then at the end of January and February we got into our rhythm and started getting better. This was a pretty good year, considering all the things that were going on.”

For Scott, the difficulty of the year helped him to prepare for the increased competition at state.

“This year was more mentally challenging because we had to deal with people being quarantined, sick, or the schedule being moved or cancelled,” Scott said. “This prepared us for the toughness of state.”

Although the team came short of their aspiration of winning a state title, Scott was happy with the end result. 

“The goal every year is to get first as a team and even though we didn’t get that I still couldn’t ask for better teammates,” Scott said.

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