Two wrestlers place at Medina Tournament

Last week, the Dukes wrestling team com­peted in a tour­na­ment in Med­ina, one of the largest tour­na­ments in the country.

More than 40 teams com­peted in the tour­na­ment, and Welling­ton had two grap­plers place in the tournament.

Seniors Nick Suther­land (182) and Sam Rodgers (285) each placed in sixth place in their respec­tive weight classes.

Senior Cody Alspach (170) won two matches in the tournament.

How­ever, the rest of the Dukes wrestlers lost both of their matches.

“Suther­land came a long length and he found him­self in this tour­na­ment,” head coach John Sedlick said. “He was strug­gling off and on, but he had a really good tour­na­ment. He knows he can do it, and he has the con­fi­dence to move on. Rodgers wanted to do well at Med­ina, and was a state qual­i­fier last year. I’m sure he wanted to do bet­ter than sixth, but it’s a very tough competition.”

Sedlick said he had mixed feel­ings about the way the team performed.

“I was very pleased with the three guys that won matches,” he said. “I was pleased there. I wasn’t happy with the oth­ers not win­ning a match. It’s a tough com­pe­ti­tion, but a cou­ple of our guys were good enough to win.”

Sedlick said some of the wrestlers who com­peted were brought to the tour­na­ment for the experience.

“They saw a great tour­na­ment and hope­fully learned a lot from it,” he said. “Hope­fully this was some­thing they can learn from and strive for next season.”

Sedlick said all of the play­ers bat­tled and there were some close matches.

Sedlick said he feels the team learned a lot at the tour­na­ment and are headed in the right direction.

“We’re get­ting there, and we’re mak­ing progress,” he said. “If we just keep plug­ging away, we’ll get better.”

The Dukes travel to Fire­lands today for a dual meet at 6 p.m.

“(Fire­lands) is a devel­op­ing team,” Sedlick said. “They’ve been tougher in years past. They’re rebuilding.”

After Fire­lands, the Dukes will travel to Chippewa on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. The tour­na­ment begins at 5 p.m. on Fri­day and resumes at 9 a.m. on Saturday.

“It’s not like the Med­ina tour­na­ment, but there will be about 12 or so teams there,” Sedlick said. “There will be mostly Divi­sion III schools like us. We’ve won the tour­na­ment the last two years, but we don’t have all our weight classes filled at the moment, so that will hurt us.”

Posted by Terra Carlson on Jan 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.