The Whippet Wrestling Team had the opportunity to host and participate in the Mid-States Wrestling Classic held at UWW on December 28 and 29. This is a long-standing tournament that has been going on for over 40 years and has some of the top talent from WI and IL participating. This year this talent consisted of 41 teams partaking in the very talented pool. There were many highly ranked teams from Illinois and Wisconsin in the tournament this year with 6 of the top 8 teams from Illinois.
Although the Whitewater team did not have as high of finish as they have had in years past, the coaching staff feels this may have been one of the team’s best performances on the mat. The level of competition may have been the best in the 17 years Coach Schimming has been coaching at Whitewater, so team placement is deceiving. Coach Schimming stated that Whitewater has at times struggled in the opening round of this tournament, however this year the team did outstanding. They won the first 6 matches contested with 5 of them coming with a pin! Of those 5 weight classes, the loss Whitewater saw was against an opponent that ended up making the semi-finals and thereby guaranteed top six placement, so we consider those some quality losses.
Whitewater had 3 wrestlers advance to day two of the competition, placing these individuals into the top 12 of their weight class. Jarvis Porcaro had his best outing of the season on day 1 with 3 great wins, putting him into day 2. Jarvis ran into tough competition on day 2. He wrestled tough but ended up taking 12th place for the tournament.
Aaron Porras also won 3 on the first day and made day two of the tournament. Aaron opened the day with a tough loss but then came back with one of his best matches of the season as he had a strong opponent from Nicollet, and it was a tight match going into the 3rd period. Aaron turned it on and put together a couple of nice takedowns and ended up using basic techniques and pinned his opponent. Aaron ended his tournament in 10th place.
The Mid-States Classic honors the top 8 wrestlers in their weight class on the podium at the end of the night. This year Whitewater had Connor Friend make the podium with a 6th place finish. Connor lost a close quarterfinal match 8-7 that came right down to the end with Connor almost getting a turn to claim back points but just did not quite make the turn. Connor came back on day 2 with a convincing 10-0 win and then a 4-0 win to reach the top 6. He then dropped the consolation semi-final match to go into the 5th place match. Connor wrestled tough in the last match but could not quite pull it out. Connor wrestled well throughout the tournament with quality matches that allowed us to find things we will work on as we enter the back half of the season.
The team is next in action on January 5th when they travel to Jefferson for an RVC Dual. On January 7th the team will host a large JV Tournament with approximately 20 teams at Whitewater High School.