The Northwestern wrestling program went to Minnesota on Nov. 16th and 17th to wrestle in a non-conference tournmanet and duel.
On Friday night, the squad fell 33-7 in a duel with St. John’s in Collegeville, Minn. Freshman Jon Grevengoed put the Raiders on the board with a dominating 17-5 win against his opponent in 141-lbs. Freshman Steven Schaffer followed up with a 8-6 win at 149-lbs. Unfortunately, no other NW competitor could pick up a win.
Sophomore Forrest Marx came close to closing out the duel with a win, but fell 4-3 at 197-lbs.
On Saturday, NW competed in the Augsburg Tournament held in Minneapolis. There were three different divisions of brackets, with each wrestler guaranteed at least two matches.
“As a team we did pretty well in my eyes,” said junior Zach Fishman. “I thought we performed well for the beginning of the season, but we know that there are still some things that we need to work on as a team if we want to get multiple people on the podium in March.”
133-lbs. freshman Tyler McWilliams rebounded from a loss in his first match to win three straight. He ended the day as the consolation champion. 149-lbs. freshman Steven Schaffer also ended up 3-1. He beat fellow Raider B.J. Groskreutz in their third matches of the day. Groskreutz finished 2-2.
In the 157-lbs. weight class, sophomore Jason Swets earned second place in his bracket with a 2-1 record.
Fishman finished third place in his bracket after going 2-1. Also in 165-lbs. were sophomore Tyler Schafer and junior Jesse McCann. Both went 2-2 at the tournament.
Junior Aaron Ruskell went 2-1 in 174-lbs.
Junior Chris Michael battled to a 2-2 record at 184-lbs.
“The team is focusing on a lot of technique that we are going to need in order to prepare for Grand View,” Fishman said. “If we can outcondition them, then we can beat their top guys and come out with a win. We just need to push the tempo in our matches and keep the pace up for the whole match, and hopefully we will see some results.”
As Fishman alluded to, the Raiders will travel to Des Moines for the Grand View Tournament on Friday night and will also square off in the Simpson Tournament in Indianola on Saturday.
