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— Mike Renning Cedar County News
HARTINGTON - After a ton of “first-evers” last season, the Cedar Catholic wrestling program returns a pair of state champions for the first time ever.
Bodie Hochstein and Easton Hochstein return as state champions after earning titles as sophomores, but coach Justin Bartling returns plenty of other talent from last year’s team.
One big difference from last season is the fact the sports cooperative with Hartington-Newcastle was dissolved earlier this year.
If the teams would have stayed together, the Trojans would have been moved up to Class B which would have caused a lot of problems, most notably, in Class B, teams can only enter one wrestler per weight class. In Class C a school can wrestle multiple wrestlers in a weight class to gain experience, but only one would count for the varsity team scoring in the meet.
The Trojan wrestlers would also be at a disadvantage when it came time for seeding at the district meet.
Head-to-head matches would count but the Cedar Catholic schedule involves mostly Class C and D schools so matches against those wrestlers would not really count, leaving the Trojan wrestlers at the bottom of the seeding pool regardless of record.
Joining Bodie and Easton Hochstein will be seniors Maverick Heine and Brady Hochstein.
The pair of Trojans will be looking to become the school’s first ever four-time state medalists after both brought home silver medals from Omaha last season.
Both are already in the top five in career victories for Cedar Catholic and are around 30 wins from the career top spot.
Hunter Kuchta returns as a two-time state qualifier and will be hungry after missing a trip to Omaha last season after dropping a match in the heartbreak round at the district meet.
Other wrestlers competing to find the mat this season will be Brody Kleinschmit, Kody Bartling, and Anson Noecker with experience and newcomers Blake Bensen, Keyan Wickre, Sam Wiebelhaus and Keaton Kaiser.
“As a team we have a really good chance to bring home a team trophy from Omaha,” said Bartling. It will take guys like Keyan Wickre, Hunter Kuchta, Brody Kleinschmit and Sam Wiebelhaus to get down there and score some points.”
The Trojans open the 2025-26 campaign at the Howells-Dodge Invitational on Dec. 6.
