“Sam Crane had a tough match against a returning state champ and fell behind in points a little bit and he almost won,” Assistant Coach Joe Collier said. “If you looked at the match, if you looked at it on film you would say Sam won. It was tough. He pushed that guy, he almost broke him.”
Taking five qualifiers to state in senior Kyle Johnston and juniors Crane, Quinn Smith, Cody Maly and Jason Kiehne, Three placed in the top five in the state in their weight classes.
Smith wrestled for third of fourth early on Saturday and lost to junior Lawton Benna from Holt to take fourth overall and Kiehne took on junior Zack Enloe from Timberland for the fifth place title and won in overtime after a tied match. However, Collier anticipated Kiehne winning state going into the tournament on Thursday.
“I though Jason was going to win state. I was going to put all my money on Jason winning state [and] I actually told him he was going to win state,” Collier said. “He worked really hard, he got stronger in the weight room and he had an awesome districts. I was really sad about that one myself because I hate it when kids work really hard at something and it doesn’t work out.”
Although the team may not have performed up to its standards with both Johnston and Maly not placing, Collier said the “decent” performance this year can only help them next year with some younger team members in sophomore Graham Ratterman and junior Sabien Cook who was unfortunately injured before districts.
“I know we’ve got six strong guys…we are just really young after that so I don’t know but we will hope for the best, hopefully we get some guys,” Collier said. “We have three guys place so it was not a bad state.”
By Kaitlyn Marsh
