Glen Strandberg
Sports Editor

The final week of the wrestling team’s regular season went according to plan. On Thursday, the Rangers cleaned up on Woodbury, 65-3, and then Saturday brought the entire conference to Forest Lake for the Suburban East Conference meet.

“Saturday went about as good as expected,” co-head coach Rich Elliot said. “We took second behind Hastings.”

With various wrestlers, like Ben Morgan and Luke Opsahl, out with injuries or illness, Elliot wasn’t anticipating a run of upsets that would push the Rangers past No. 2 ranked Hastings.

Even though Morgan did not wrestle at 103 pounds, he still made all-conference, thanks to a perfect 8-0 record in the SEC. Opsahl (112 pounds) was voted all-conference honorable mention after going 3-1 this season.

Other big winners for Forest Lake were Kevin Nelson at 119 pounds, who took second place after losing in the finals.

The same goes for Charlie Janssen at 130 pounds, who lost 3-2 in the championship match.

Shawn Saxe was the top wrestler at 135 pounds, picking up first place with a 4-3 decision in the finals.

At the 160 pound weight class, Brent Kolbow lost in the championship and took second place in the SEC.

Rolling through at 171 pounds was Lucas Munkelwitz, who capped off his day with a 14-2 decision to win the title.

Finishing off the tournament were Trevor Osterbauer with a second place at 215 pounds, and Collin Peterson earning a 4-3 decision to win the heavyweight class.

At Thursday’s match, Woodbury turned out to be very little competition for the No. 8 ranked Rangers.

The young Tony Smith filled in for the ailing Morgan and won 10-2 to open the evening.

Nelson controlled his opponent at 119 pounds; Andy Kolbow won big (13-3) at 125 pounds; Cody Kendrick stepped up at 130 pounds for the win; Saxe had an easy time against Max Boyd; Nick Zemke won by forfeit at 140 pounds; Lee Smith won handily at 145 pounds; Brandon Yetter (152) pulled off a 6-4 decision; Brent Kolbow won at 160 pounds by the same score as Yetter; Munkelwitz took care of Mike Smith; Logan Robinson dominated at 189 pounds; Osterbauer overpowered Nick Galvin, and Josh Mabry wrapped up the night with a win in the heavyweight division.

With the SEC behind them, the wrestlers look straight ahead to the Section 7AAA tournament, which runs from Thursday, Feb. 15 - Friday, Feb. 16.

The Rangers start with St. Francis at 7 p.m., at Cambridge-Isanti High School.

“We’re pretty excited. We got the seed we wanted,” Elliot said. “We wanted to be right in that four, five seed, so that we can wrestle St. Francis in the quarters and then Anoka in the semis.”

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