New Lothrop Ends Championship Wait
February 22, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
BATTLE CREEK – Taylor Krupp wasn’t worried as he watched New Lothrop teammates fall by two, three and five-point decisions during Saturday’s MHSAA Division 4 Team Wrestling Final at Kellogg Arena.
He was just waiting for his turn to shine.
Similarly, his team had been waiting for Saturday's opportunity. The Hornets watched Hudson build on an MHSAA-record five-season championship streak over the last three years, but never got to take on the Tigers in a Final, having fallen in three straight Semifinals that all came down to their final matches.
Finally Saturday, the Hornets and Krupp advanced to a championship face-off with the Tigers. And Krupp’s pin at 160 pounds keyed a comeback 33-22 win that gave New Lothrop is first MHSAA title since 2004.
“We always wanted to wrestle Hudson. The last five years they’ve been on top of the mountain, and it’s always been a goal,” Krupp said. “We wrestled Hesperia, wrestled Carson City … but we always wanted to wrestle Hudson. We finally got to wrestle, and we’re glad with how it turned out.”
Hudson last season tied Davison’s record of five straight MHSAA team titles won from 2002-06 and entered Saturday afternoon with a third straight senior class that had never finished lower than first in Finals competition.
New Lothrop, meanwhile, carried a banner during Saturday’s pre-Finals “Grand March” that displayed the years of all 12 Hornets team titles – 11 on the left side and only 2004 on the right, looking almost like it was added there in anticipation of more soon to come.
That date finally will have company.
Hudson built a 22-10 lead with only five matches left, but it was not enough to carry the Tigers through the Hornets' strongest weights. Senior Josh Wendling at 152 pounds started a run of five straight New Lothrop wins to finish the match.
New Lothrop’s closing run was not without some well-calculated strategy on the part of coach Jeff Campbell. He could’ve left undefeated Krupp wrestling at 171 like he had in the Semifinal and will next weekend at the Individual Finals, and gotten some sure wins – but didn’t feel that lineup would add up to enough points to overtake the Tigers.
Instead, he wrestled Krupp at 160, followed with sophomore Caleb Symons at 171 and then continued with 189-pounder Cody Symons. Krupp got the pin, Caleb Symons – with only about 25 matches to his credit this season – got a major decision to put the Hornets ahead, and Cody Symons followed with another pin to guarantee the championship.
“The job Caleb Symons has been doing in practice, we decided this was the way we wanted to go a couple weeks ago. He’s really earned the chance to go and gave us the confidence to do that,” Campbell said. “He’s kinda been our secret weapon.”
Total, New Lothrop won at eight weights. Freshman Connor Krupp (103), junior Dalton Birchmeier (125), sophomore Steven Garza II (135) and senior Owen Wilson (215) also added points into the Hornets’ team total.
But some losses also were wins. New Lothrop freshman Erik Birchmeier did fall to reigning MHSAA Individual Finals champion JD Waters by major decision – but avoided a pin. Senior Aaron Bauman fell to Hudson two-time individual champion Cole Weaver, but only 4-1. Sophomore Cole Hersch fell to 2013 individual runner-up Isaac Dusseau, but only 3-1.
“Hudson obviously is a great team, but if you wrestle your game, anything can happen. And that was a perfect example,” Krupp said. “Me, Cody, (we) didn’t win us the match. What won us the match were the guys who stayed off their backs and didn’t give up bonus points.”
Nine of the Division 4 Final’s matches pitted Individual Finals qualifiers. Three matches remained scoreless after the first round.
Seniors Weaver, Waters and Dusseau all wrestled in their fourth team championship matches for Hudson, all also part of the lineup during their freshman season of 2011.
“I’m always proud of them, win, lose or draw. These boys have tasted victory; now they’ve tasted defeat,” Hudson coach Scott Marry said. “That builds character for later on. They’re going to have to pick themselves up and they’re going to have to act like classy young men now.
“You can’t always win. Now it’s the other side of the fence. It’s OK.”
Hudson, top-ranked entering the postseason and top seeded going into this weekend, finished 35-5 and will have 14 participants at next weekend’s Individual Finals at The Palace of Auburn Hills.
New Lothrop, ranked No. 2 and the second seed, finished 31-1 with its only loss by five to Lowell – which beat St. Johns to win Division 2 on Saturday.
The Hornets have 13 Individual Finals qualifiers and have made the MHSAA Team Quarterfinals all 13 seasons under Campbell.
“Jeff Campbell is the classiest guy I’ve ever met,” Marry said. “If there’s anybody in the state who I would want to have the state title if it wasn’t my kids, I’d want it to be Jeff Campbell. I’m so happy for him and his program.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Taylor Krupp has his hand raised in victory after a pin in his 160-pound match during Saturday’s Division 4 Final. (Middle) Hudson coach Scott Marry (left) and New Lothrop coach Jeff Campbell shake hands after the Hornets' victory. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Richmond Takes Latest Dramatic D3 Final
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
February 25, 2017
MOUNT PLEASANT – It took 14 matches and eight steps through the dual meet tiebreaker criteria Saturday to decide the latest edition of the wrestling rivalry between Richmond and Dundee.
But when Criteria H showed a 17-8 advantage for Richmond in total first points scored, it was Blue Devils coach Brandon Day who turned to his team with a triumphant fist in the air, sending the Richmond wrestlers and crowd into hysterics.
“I walked to the table and (Dundee coach Tim Roberts) told me, ‘You already won,’” Day said. “I told him, ‘We’ve got to quit doing this.’”
Richmond prevailed in the back-and-forth Division 3 title match, which ended tied at 28 following a 4-3 win from Richmond 130-pound sophomore Hayden Bastian. The title is Richmond’s eighth, and first since 2015 when it defeated Dundee in somehow less dramatic fashion with a pair of pins in the final two matches.
“It’s crazy, you don’t know what’s going to happen – it’s like the lottery,” said Richmond senior 112-pounder Roy Costello, who had one of those pins in 2015, and won a 3-2 decision on Saturday night. “It’s really suspenseful, your heart’s beating 100 mph, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The two teams were deadlocked through the first seven criteria, which includes three varieties of penalty points assessed, total matches won, pinfalls, technical falls and major decisions. It was fitting for a rivalry that has dominated Division 3 since 2006, with the teams now having combined to win 10 of the last 12 titles -- Richmond with six and Dundee with four. Of those 10, seven were won against the other.
“Our programs are intertwined now because we’ve wrestled each other so many times in this situation,” Roberts said. “Today they were that much better than us. It’s pretty close, but they did that much better than us today, so they get to be champs this year. It’s close, but they won.”
The dual was tied three times over the final five matches -- 22-22, 25-25 and 28-28. The final tie was forced by Bastian, who recorded a takedown with less than 30 seconds remaining to send the match to the scorebooks.
“I was stressed -- I was so nervous that I wasn’t going to get a takedown,” said Bastian, who didn’t know if his win would give his team the title. “I’m fairly new to the sport. I started wrestling in seventh grade. I don’t really know much. My first match I didn’t really know what I was doing. I don’t know almost anything, I just go out there and wrestle my best.”
Bastian’s coach had plenty of confidence in him before sending him out onto the mat.
“Hayden Bastian is the best kid in the state nobody knows about,” Day said. “He made 130 for the first time here this weekend, and that was the difference.”
Added Costello: “Hayden performed awesome this whole weekend. Even though he’s not a state qualifier, he performed awesome.”
Dundee jumped out to a 22-9 lead in the match, getting pins from Sean Sterling at 160 pounds and Brandon Whitman at 189, a major decision at 145 from Tylor Orrison and decisions from Zachary Bellaire at 140 and Kyle Motylinski at 171.
Even with the lead, however, Roberts didn’t feel safe.
“We knew we needed more,” Roberts said. “We needed another win down there that we didn’t get. We knew we were kind of in trouble at 22-9. At 119 and 125, our guys did a nice job and came away with wins there, but we knew we were one win short when it was 22-9.”
Richmond stormed back to tie the dual with a major decision from Colton McKiernan at 215, a decision from Tyler Marino at 285 and a pin from Austin Kilburn at 103.
Kilburn’s pin ended a wild match against Dundee’s Caleb Fairchild, which saw both wrestlers taken to their backs in the opening period. Kilburn, a freshman, regained his composure and scored seven more points before getting the pin with 41 seconds left in the match.
Costello’s win put the Blue Devils up 25-22, but Daniel Jaworski (119) and Christian Killion (125) each won decisions for the Vikings to give them the 28-25 lead heading into the final match.
Richmond opened the dual with a pin from senior Owen Vannatter at 135 pounds, and after Dundee took a 7-6 lead with its wins from Bellaire and Orrison, Richmond sophomore Eric Barr pulled off an upset at 152 with a 3-2 win against Dundee’s Alex Motylinski.
“Eric Barr!” Day shouted. “Eric Barr knocked off No. 3 in the state. (Barr) didn’t make it out of our Regional. That was huge.”
The MHSAA Wrestling Finals are presented by the Michigan Army National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) Dundee (left) and Richmond faced off Saturday for the eighth time over the last decade of Division 3 Finals. (Middle) Dundee’s Sean Sterling works toward a pin during his match at 160. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)