Morale up as wrestlers ‘slow roll’ into good meet placings

RANDOLPH – The Randolph boys and girls wrestling teams had two separate tournaments last week and progress continues in the name of the Cardinals.

The girls traveled to the West Holt Invitational Dec. 4 and the boys headed to Stanton the following Saturday.

Head coach Mark Lech saw his two girls head to West Holt with Karma Henry and Gracie Wortman grappling at 110 and 120 pounds. Wortman took third and Henry battled but did not place.

They return to the mat Friday in Elgin. Nine boys returned home with a fourth-place performance in Stanton with seven wrestlers bringing home medals.

“We did not have any champions, but all wrestlers contributed to the team score to boost them in the top four,” Randolph head coach Mark Lech said.

Aiden Gubbels (285) and Gavin Wortman (165) both finished second in their respective weight classes with Gage Jensen (190) ending up third.

Cole Jensen (120) and Joe Miller (215) took home fifth-place performances while Owen Junck (138) and Justin Backer (175) were sixth-best in their brackets.

Gage Jensen said that after the first few weeks of the campaign, the Cardinals vibe is doing just fine.

“I feel like morale is pretty high right now,” Jensen said. “We’re all doing pretty good, and we’re placing pretty well at the meets. We just need to get back into the rhythm of actually wrestling. And I think we can improve a lot for sure.”

It’s been a few months since the Cardinals became a team of its own and the days of the co-op with Laurel-Concord-Coleridge fade further into the distance.

“When we were with Laurel, we had a few extra wrestlers from there, but most of the older wrestlers graduated,” Jensen said. “I don’t really see much of an effect on us now that we’re not with Laurel. It was nice and all having the extra wrestlers, but I don’t think it would have affected us too much if we were still with them.”

On a personal level, they were all friendly, he said. “I feel like we were very close with Laurel. We all messed around. It was all pretty good vibes throughout the whole time,” he said.

Jensen likes the slow roll of improvement for the Cardinals as they continue into the meat of their schedule.

“We started the year off with a pretty decent meet which just got everybody used to wrestling, which was very beneficial,” he said. “Then we kind of took from that meet and we had a few key points Mr. Lech wanted us to work on, and we worked on those for a few practices. We went into our meet at Stanton and we improved on those things and everybody did pretty well.”

With the improvements being made and the medal placements thus far, morale remains strong, he said.

“I feel like people were very nervous going into that opening meet, but since everybody came out doing very well, I feel like the morale was just up going into Stanton,” Jensen said. “So, everybody was excited to wrestle, and we did pretty well.”

The boys will have two different competitions this coming week. They head back to Stanton to compete in a quad against Winside, Pender, and the host, and then head to the Wisner Invitational Saturday.