Eagles top River Valley

By DAVE CLARK

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM - It was a bruising battle of Brown County.

With a 34-29 victory over the River Valley Wildcats, which is comprised of athletes from Springfield, Sleepy Eye and Cedar Mountain-Comfrey, the New Ulm Eagles wrestling squad shook off some post-holiday rust.

"Both teams are a little beat up," said Eagles coach Dar Arndt. "We had to get it into high gear. Last week, we won seven matches against St. James and lost, tonight we won just six matches and won."

"We can't give them five pins and a major decision and hope to win," said Wildcats coach Todd Bertram. "We've both got some young kids and they got the matchups they wanted, but I thought our kids wrestled really well tonight."

The evening started with the Wildcats Andrew Krueger taking a 12-10 decision over the Eagles Charles Johnson at 152, followed by Jesse Fox pinning New Ulm's Rick Traulich at 1:40 of the first period at 160, giving the Wildcats a 8-0 lead.

But Eric Kral scored his first varsity win for the Eagles next at 171, pinning DJ Thooft with 17 seconds left in the second period after being down 7-2. "Give a lot of credit to Kral," said Arndt. "He got his first win in a match we needed."

Eagles captain and Andy Bernard rolled his record to 12-1 with a pinfall victory over Bryan Reimers just as the buzzer was to go off ending the second period. Bernard is ranked fourth in the state and his pin gave New Ulm their first lead of the night at 12-8.

Heavyweight Travis Aufderheide then manhandled River Valley's Steve Marquardt for almost two minutes before pinning him with 15 seconds left in the first period, extending the Eagles lead to 18-8.

Although New Ulm's Neil Wenninger lost the next match at 103 to Brady Augustine 6-0, Arndt credits the seventh grader with helping the Eagles win the team contest. "I.m happy with the way Wenninger wrestled. He's so young, all we asked him to do was keep his shoulder off the mat, and he did that."

In another matchup of experience versus youth, senior Wildcat Pat Lepoold beat eighth grader Jeff Gieseke 9-2, with Arndt also giving credit to Gieseke for "battling hard and keeping us in the match."

River Valley then regained the lead, 26-18, by recording two straight pins.119 pounder Casey Domeier pinned Geoff Beranek with 1:12 to go in the second period, and Kevin Widmer pinned New Ulm's Curtis Thoreson in the first period.

But the Eagles' returned fire with two straight pins of their own. Adam Bartels returned from an injury with a vengeance at 130, pinning Chris Moritz at 1:17 of the first period, and captain Nate Gieseke proved why he's ranked second in the state and remains undefeated at 13-0. Leading 10-0, he pinned Ryan Nelson with :38 left in the second period.

With New Ulm up 30-26, New Ulm's Dan Mielke and Matt Hillesheim battled in the toughest match of the evening at 140. Mielke took a 9-2 lead with three takedowns and a near fall after the first period, but Hillesheim battled back to 9-8 after the second period and took a 12-9 decision with a near pin at the end of the third.

This gave New Ulm a 30-29 edge going into the last match at 145 between Matt Wenninger and the Wildcats Mike Halter. It was no contest, as Wenninger took a major decision with a 14-0 victory that nailed the Eagles win.

"I told Matt to go out there and seal it and he took charge," said Arndt.

The win moves the Eagles to 6-4 overall, 1-1 in the South Central Conference, with action resuming next Friday night in Blue Earth at 7 p.m.