Red Oak wrestles way to 3rd place finish
GLENWOOD—In what Red Oak wrestling coach Tiegen Podliska described as the best performance in years, the Tigers wrestled their way to a third-place finish in Saturday’s Class 2A wrestling sectionals.
All of the 12 wrestlers who went to sectionals finished in the top five, with five taking second place — and earning a trip to the district tournament. Last year, just one wrestler qualified for districts.
The performance came despite being down their most successful wrestler — and highest projected tournament seed — who tore his ACL two days before the meet.
“We talked about how we wanted to represent ourselves and the expectations we had for our program coming in,” Tiegen Podliska said. “We talked about why we wrestled and how we were going to wrestle for those without the opportunity.”
As a team, Red Oak finished with 175.5 points, almost 70 points better than last year, when, as Podliska said, “we finished dead last.”
“Having been leading this program for the last five years, I can say last weekend was the best we’ve ever wrestled at Hawkeye 10’s, but after today, I can say this performance was the best by the Red Oak wrestling team in the last five years, and results would indicate long before that. We are building a tradition, so either get on board or get out of the way.”
Those finishing in second place were: Cam Vanderhoof (106); Clay Selberg (145); Thomas Bently (152); Carlos Guerra (170) and Christian Terry (195).
Third place finishers were: Michael Gomez (126); Tyler McMann (138); and Colin Bruce (182). Fourth place finishers were Luke Mellott (160) and Logan Alexander (285). Fifth place finishers were Francisco Rohner (132) and Colton Kinnison (220).
Southwest Valley finishes sixth in Class A with 114 points.
Teagan Lundquist (113) scored 16 points for the team and finished third. In the quarterfinal round, Lundquist won by a fall (1:22) over Tucker Darrah of Mount Ayr. In the semifinal round, Lundquist lost by decision to Nathan Phillips of Interstate 35.
Lundquist won the third place match by fall (5:55) over Cole Haines, but lost to Phillips again, this time by rule, in the second place match
Kyle Casagrande (120) earned nine points for Southwest Valley with his fourth-place finish. Casagrande lost by fall to Brayden Egli of Interstate 35.
Other finishers include: Logan Calkins (145), third; Bryce Newton (285), third; Taylor Khun (132), fourth; Merik Gaule (170), fourth; John Kinser (195), fourth; Philip Curin (126), fifth; Brett Scharftoh (160), fifth; and Bryson Rhamy (182), sixth.