In his semi-final match, senior Trevor Peterson upends Morrill’s Michael Morgan en route to a first period pin. Peterson finished with the Chase County meet’s first place medal at 182 lbs. (Johnson Publications photo)
Three medal at home wrestling tourney
At their home meet on Saturday, Chase County wrestlers captured three medals as their team finished 13th overall.
Ogallala won the championship, 18 points ahead of Bridgeport, among a field of 18 teams.
Chase County’s Trevor Peterson, 27-1 on the season, pinned four of his five opponents in the 182 lb. class, after winning his opener 16-0 (tech. fall), to take the gold.
Two other Longhorns, Kenyan Biesecker at 138 lbs. and Dawson Mollendor, 152 lbs., finished with sixth place medals.
Mollendor finished 3-2 on the day, while Biesecker went 2-3. With the five-match per day limit, Mollendor had to forfeit his sixth match to Wray’s Grady Linman.
Coach Matt Vlasin said his team wrestled much better as a group than the week before.
“We had a much better warmup and were ready to go Saturday,” he said.
While the team captured three individual medals, their overall team finish reflected how young they are, Vlasin said.
“Especially when you go up against the top two seeds. We’re a bit behind there,” he said.
However, the team has shown definite improvement since December, he said.
Bridgeport’s Trevor Weidner was chosen by the coaches for the Vern Phelps Memorial Medal, as the day’s outstanding wrestler. He took gold in the 145 lb. class.
Coach Vlasin said Chase County’s Peterson was certainly in the running for the Phelps medal but the winner had a tougher bracket.
Earlier in the week, seven of the team’s younger wrestlers competed in the Perkins Co. JV tournament. The Jan. 14 tourney was run with four-man round robin brackets. No team scores were kept.
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