An Incredible Weekend of Wrestling!

This last weekend was a busy and highly successful weekend for wrestling in Aberdeen at all levels. Before I get into that I wanted to give a brief overview of the triangular Central had the previous weekend and the ESD middle school tourney. The Varsity traveled down to Yankton to face both Brandon Valley and Yankton. Brandon Valley is one of the top ranked dual teams this year and showed why handing us a 53-13 defeat. Brenden Salfrank won by a major decision, Brock Martin, Drew Salfrank and Dillon Stoebner each won by decision to get us our 13 points.
Against Yankton it was a different story beating the Bucks at home 40-26. Brock Martin and Sam Calvert earned pins, Jacob Bellefuille got a major decision and Logan Optiz, Brenden Salfrank won by decision. Receiving forfeit victories were Dylan Schaunaman, Garrett Mitzel and Samson Flakus.


The next day the middle schoolers were wrestling in the ESD Middle School Tournament and what a successful day it was. Aberdeen had 6 ESD conference champs and 4 runner ups. ESD champs were: Bryce Beitelspacher, Eli Biegler, Mason Schrempp, Esten Foss, Rayden Zens and Tate Huff. Runner ups were: Brody Aesoph, Noah Kramer, Cordel Rychlik and Ridley Waldo. Conference champions get their name up on the wrestling champion boards located at both Simmons middle school and Holgate middle school to show off forever. Congrats to these young men!


The next action was the Huron tournament which kicked off a busy weekend of wrestling for high school, middle school and youth. The team finished in second place with 166.5 points, Winner won the tourney with 236 points followed by Aberdeen then Bon Homme/Scotland 161.5, Huron 152, Madison 143 to round out the top 5.
Aberdeen's lone champion was Brenden Salfrank at 113 lbs. who continued his undefeated season with a bye then 3 straight tech falls. He beat Madison's Truman Stoller in the finals 17-1. The other finalist was at 195 with senior Dillon Stoebner who lost a close one to Jordan Gall of Bon Homme/Scotland.
Also placing was:
4th place - Jacob Bellefuille (106), Brock Martin (126), Sam Calvert (152), Garrett Mitzel (160), Dylan Schaunaman (170), and Connor Bockorny (285)
5th Place - Braden Senger (132), Calvin Beadle (145)
6th place - Samson Flakus.


While the Varsity was in Huron the middle schoolers sent 23 kids to Pierre for the Middle school state tournament. This is the 3rd year for this tourney and it is growing into the prestigious event I had hoped it would when it was introduced. It has grown to over 400 wrestlers and I am told they had to turn some away so they will need to look into some changes for it to allow all to wrestle in it that want to. There were several 32 man brackets with around 12 hours of wrestling. Of the 23 kids that made the trip 13 of them placed bringing home 4 State champions and a runner up! Here are the kids that placed:


80 lbs. Tate Huff - State Champ
95 lbs. Rayden Zens - State Champ
106 lbs. Mason Schrempp - State Champ
195 lbs. Bryce Beitelspacher - State Champ


Esten Foss - Runner Up
Eli Biegler - 3rd
Ridley Waldo - 4th
Cordel Rychlick - 4th
Brody Aesoph 5th
Beau Price - 6th
Ayden Gisi - 6th
Noah Kramer - 7th
Jacob Hieb - 8th


Of Note: Tate, Rayden, Mason and Bryce earned both ESD Conference Titles and MS State Titles. An incredible accomplishment for those guys! They will also have their names on the Middle School State Champions board located in the high school wrestling room.


the next day was the annual Midwest Youth Dual tournament held at the Barnett Center. This year the participating teams were: Aberdeen, Watertown, South Border, Carrington, The Bison Wrestling Club, Bismarck Gorillas and Sturgis.
Aberdeen won their 4 team bracket easily beating Carrington and the Bismarck Gorillas before facing Sturgis. Both teams were undefeated so the winner would come out of the bracket as the #1 seed. In one of the most exciting youth duals I have seen in a long time it came down to the heavyweight match. Aberdeen was trailing 38-37 when Jacob Hieb turned his opponent to his back in the second period and earned the fall securing the dual win! It was a great moment for Jacob and an exciting moment for the athletes, coaches, parents and fans. This win sent us to bracket play where we would face the two seed from the other bracket, South Border. Aberdeen, still riding the momentum from the win against Sturgis, took it to South Border in what turned into a blowout win. The championship would not be as easy facing the Bison Wrestling Club out of Fargo. This team has some very talented wrestlers but I don't think they expected to get the fight that they got. We took an early lead and held onto that throughout the first half of the dual but the 6th graders that the Fargo team brought showed us how talented they were and carried them to the title. We ended up falling short 47-33 to earn the runner up finish. A great day of wrestling for the youth and their families and what an atmosphere NSU Wrestling put on. All the kids got to run through the tunnel with the fog machine during team introductions. The place was rocking throughout the day with exciting duals and matches. The quality of wrestling was very impressive to watch and the face offs for the championship dual were awesome.


As I said at the beginning of this blog it was an incredible weekend of wrestling. The middle school season is now finished, hopefully all of those kids decide to participate in the AAU post season and practice with the youth club at NSU on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The high school has regions this Saturday right here in Aberdeen at Golden Eagles Arena. Wrestling starts at 10:00. The Varsity kids are hoping to punch their ticket to the state tournament next weekend in Sioux Falls. The youth club will be chartering a bus to Sidney Montana to wrestle in a K-8th grade dual tournament. Last year we won the tournament and are hopeful to repeat that feat. The AAU individual district tournament is March 7th. Aberdeen is also hosting the AAU Region tourney on Sunday, March 15th and we are looking for volunteers to mostly work a table. If interested please let us know. The AAU state tournament is in Rapid City this year on March 27-29.


Good luck to all Aberdeen wrestlers throughout the rest of the post season!