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HARTINGTON — Three Cedar Catholic wrestlers were crowned as Mid States Conference champs here Saturday.
Bodie and Easton Hochstein and Madison Kuchta all earned conference championships, while Maverick Heine and Braeden Kleinschmit took second-place honors.
Brody Kleinschmit added a third-place medal as Ty Oper and Hunter Kuchta captured fourth-place performances.
It was the first time Cedar Catholic has ever hosted the Mid States Conference Tournament.
To make up for all of the weather cancellations and postponements, Cedar was able to earn a spot in Friday’s Madison Invitational, as well.
Cedar Catholic Coach Justin Bartling was pleased with the way the weekkend went. The team was not able to wrestle at full strength Saturday, but still managed to earn a fourthplace finish. O’Neill took the team title, while Battle Creek was the conference runner-up.
“The boys from top to bottom continue to improve, and man, it really started to show,” he said. “For having almost no practice to wrestling two meets in back-to-back days, truly shows how hard these kids work and push each other every day.”
Bodie Hochstein was the team’s top wrestler as he recorded a number of big wins and is now 27-1 this season with plenty of wins over ranked wrestlers.
“We did pretty good, we just didn’t have the numbers we needed,” Bodie Hochstein said of his team’s fourth-place finish at the conference meet. “We wrestled harder than everybody else.
“I think all of us have a lot of experience and with so much talent in the wrestling room, you just have so many good wrestling partners and different wrestling styles to work with every day. Every day is really competitive with everyone and I like it a lot. It makes all of us a lot better. I think that’s just why we’re so good.”
The girls also had plenty to be proud of. Madison Kuchta pinned her way to the title, defeating Shaylee Gardner of Pierce in just 21 seconds and pinning O’Neill’s Myriam Garcia in 1:03.
“Madison Kuchta won her first gold medal of the year and is the school’s first girl wrestler to medal in our conference,” Bartling said.
This next week will be busy after some matches were moved around due to all the snow that impacted the area in recent days.
Monday, they traveled to Randolph and Tuesday they hosted Winnebago and Wakefield in a triangular.
Friday the girls will be competing in Plainview and Saturday the boys will be there to wrap up the weekend.
“Everything is trending up for this team right now and I believe this group is going to keep the momentum going with only a few weeks left until districts,” Bartling said.
The Trojans headed to the Madison tournament last week in the face of a recent cold spell and brought plenty of heat to the mats once again.
Winning their individual brackets were Maverick Heine, Bodie Hochstein and Brady Hochstein, while second-place medals were won by Easton Hochstein and Braeden Kleinschmit.
Kale Korth brought home a third-place medal and Brody Kleinschmit added a fifthplace finish.
“The boys wrestled really well, especially for a group of kids that continue to be snowed in and have not had much practice at all these past few weeks,” Cedar head coach Justin Bartling said. “Brady was wrestler of the Madison tournament. It was the most complete tournament he’s wrestled all year, dominating in all phases of the matches.”
MidStates Boys Team Scores
1. O’Neill, 212; 2. Battle Creek, 204.5; 3. Crofton-Bloomfield, 162; 4. Cedar Catholic, 140.5; 5. Pierce, 121; 6. Wayne, 81; 7. Boone Central, 79; 8. Norfolk Catholic, 65.5; 9. GACC, 62.
