Article by John Schimming

On Saturday, five Whippet Wrestlers traveled to Campbellsport High School to compete in the WIAA Individual Wrestling Tournament with their eyes on placing in the top three to punch their ticket to the state tournament which begins on Thursday at the Kohl Center in Madison. After some very good wrestling by all of our student-athletes, Amaru Casas found himself on the podium, thus qualifying for his first trip to the state tournament.

Amaru started off his day with a very well wrestled match against a regional champion from Elkhart Lake winning the match 7-4.  He followed with a rematch against a Jefferson opponent who he had lost to at the conference tournament. Amaru wrestled very well, controlling the match the whole way coming away with a 6-1 victory. This put him into the championship, thus qualifying for the state tournament. He, then, had a couple of tough matches along the way. In the finals, he lost to a highly state-ranked athlete and then in his true 2nd match he lost to a very good competitor from East Troy, who is also state-ranked. We are very happy for Amaru as he has put in a lot of time outside of his season working to make himself better since he did not join wrestling until mid-way through the season his Freshman year.

Jaden Salmieri finished 4th on the day pinning two opponents but dropping two 1 point losses to miss out on qualifying. Also wrestling well was Cody Gamble dropping a one-point match and Will Leibbrand wrestling a great match but falling in the opening round. Each of these guys had their opponent lose in the next round, thus ending their season. David Cushman had a couple of very tough opponents wrestling well but dropped each of his matches.

Amaru will be competing on Thursday evening at 7 pm at the Kohl Center vs a student-athlete from Wrightstown.