With the end of January nearing, the high school wrestling season is starting to wind down as regular seasons will soon come to an end and we’ll get into state championships, both individual and dual.

Wyoming Seminary continues to look like the best team in the country and the Knights proved it recently, taking on two of New Jersey’s best teams in back-to-back days. Also proving its dominance was Malvern Prep, taking home a team title from Escape The Rock, and Bishop McCort after dominating the Mid-Winter Mayhem Tournament.

Additionally, we saw some noteworthy upsets in the past couple weeks that shuffled up the national rankings a bit.

Wyoming Seminary Takes Out Jersey’s Best

The top team in the country, Wyoming Seminary out of Pennsylvania, took on New Jersey’s best teams in Blair Academy and Delbarton in consecutive days earlier this month. 

Against Blair on Jan. 12, Wyoming Seminary got tricky with its lineup, bumping many of its best up in weight and won the dual 27-21.

In the first match, Wyoming Sem’s #2 (at 126) Luke Lilledahl moved up to 132 to face #5 Matty Lopes, downing him 3-1 in sudden victory. Bumping from 132 to 138, Wyoming Sem’s #9 Matthew Botello fell 2-1 in ultimate tiebreakers to Blair’s #10 Billy Dekraker.

With the dual tied 6-6 after four matches, Wyoming Seminary moved #3 (at 150) Vince Bouzakis up to 157 and he earned an 8-6 win over #18 Paul Ognissanti. Wyoming Sem kept rolling from then, collecting wins by #2 Joseph Sealey at 165, and a 15-13 win for #8 Jake Daily over Blair’s Cael Meilnik at 190, among others.  

Blair forfeited at 215, but its #6 heavyweight Carter Neves won via first-period fall. The dual ended with a match between #1 Leo DeLuca of Blair and #3 Nathan Desmond. DeLuca came out on top again with a 6-1 decision.

Against Delbarton, Wyoming Seminary wasn’t as challenged as it won the dual 34-24.

Starting at 113, the Knights jumped out to a 13-0 start, led by a pair of ranked wins by #6 Davis Motyka at 113 and Desmond at 120. Motyka beat #4 (at 106) Cameron Sontz 3-1 in tiebreakers, while Desmond defeated #10 Dan Jones 8-2. 

Delbarton got on the board first when #9 Jayden James pinned Michael Trujillo at 138 pounds. At 150, Gabe Logan got another win for Delbarton, cutting the deficit to 16-9.

Bouzakis won via tech fall before Sealey beat #7 Alessio Perentin 5-3 at 165. Wyoming Sem forfeited matches at 175 and 285 but got a pin from Dailey at 190 and a major decision by #2 Jude Correa at 215 to help secure the win.

Escape The Rock

Staying in Pennsylvania, the Escape The Rock Tournament took place in Holland. Another Pennsylvania school, Malvern Prep, took home the team title with 199 points. Faith Christian Academy finished second with 158, while St. Joseph Regional took third with 144. Lake Highland Prep scored 139 points to finish fourth.

Malvern Prep led the field with three champions, while Faith Christian Academy and St. Joseph Regional had one champ each. Lake Highland Prep didn’t have a single champion but tied Malvern Prep with eight total placers.

The trio of champs for Malvern Prep were #7 Nick O’Neill at 133, #2 Jack Consiglio at 145 and #20 Nick Wehmeyer at 189. O’Neill downed #12 Bryce Manera of Southern Regional 7-4 in the finals, while Consiglio earned a 1-0 decision against #16 Chase Van Horn of Brooke Point. Wehmeyer beat Lake Highland Prep’s Robert Kucharczk 7-4 in the final.

Faith Christian’s champion was #6 Gauge Botero at 121 pounds, downing #18 Keanu Dillard of Bethlehem Catholic 11-4. Finishing as runner-ups for Faith Christian were #5 Adam Waters at 172 and Cale Weidemoyer at 160.

The #2-ranked Ryan Burton was the lone champion for St. Joseph Regional, downing Waters 4-2 in the final at 172. Rocco Dellagatta finished as a runner-up.

Despite finishing 10th as a team, State College had two individual champions in #13 Asher Cunningham at 160 and #11 Nick Pavlechko at 285.

In one of the biggest matches of the tournament, Notre Dame’s #3 Ayden Smith downed #4 Paul Kenny of Christian Brothers 3-2 in the 114-pound final. Smith also beat Kenny, a U17 World Champion, at Powerade.

At 150 pounds, #4 Kollin Rath of Bethlehem Catholic beat Southern Regional’s #9 Matthew Henrich 4-3 to win the title.

Mid-Winter Mayhem

Another top team out of the Keystone State, Bishop McCort just went and dominated at the Mid-Winter Mayhem Tournament, finishing first with 252.5 points. Central Mountain took second with 147.5 points, while Clearfield scored 138.5 to finish third. Montgomery High School took fourth with 127 points.

The Crimson Crushers of Bishop McCort had three champions and were led as they always are by both #1 Bo Bassett and #3 Jax Forrest. At 139 pounds, Bassett finished first with five wins, all by tech fall. Not to be outdone, Forrest went 6-0 in winning at 127 pounds with six wins via tech fall. Also winning an individual title was #6 Melvin Miller at 152 pounds, racking up four techs and a pin in six matches.

Bishop McCort had six total finalists, far more than any other team. The Crushers saw runner-up performances out of Lincoln Sledzianowski at 121 pounds, #15 Mason Gibson at 133 and Devon Magro at 160.

Central Mountain and Clearfield each had a finalist, with Griffin Walizer taking second for Central Mountain and Brady Collins finishing as runner-up at 152 for Clearfield.

Montgomery had two individual champs in #3 Conner Harer at 160 and #14 Brandt Harer at 133. You guessed it, they’re brothers. Brandt upset the ranked Gibson, a Penn State commit, while Conner beat Magro 3-2 in the final.

Key High School Upsets

As is the case much of the time, we tend to see upsets each and every week. It helps make wrestling the amazing sport that it is. So, we’ve compiled some notable high school upsets that have happened over the past couple weeks. This certainly isn’t all of them, but it’s a decent compilation.

At 126 pounds, we saw a couple of intertwined upsets when #20 Mason Ziegler downed then-#11 Eren Sement. Ziegler then lost to unranked Anthony Mutarelli of Council Rock South, who is now ranked #19.

Moving on to 132 pounds, Alex Gutierrez beat #17 Elijah Cortez of Gilroy, a Cornell commit, at the MidCals Tournament. At Escape The Rock, Bryce Manera was unranked but beat then-#12 Camden Baum, jumping him to #12. As already noted, the previously unranked Brandt Harer beat #13 Mason Gibson at Mid-Winter Mayhem.

In one of the biggest upsets, freshman Xavier Chavez out of Eloy, Arizona, beat #2 Sergio Vega of Sunnyside High School 10-9 at 138 pounds in the Flowing Wells Invitational. At 139, unranked Kase Chopp downed #10 Dalton Perry at Mid-Winter Mayhem.

At 144, unranked Chase Van Hoven beat then-#4 Alessandro Nini before almost beating #2 Jack Consiglio at Escape The Rock, falling 1-0.

Many more unranked-over-ranked upsets happened, such as Max Stein of Faith Christian downing #14 Zach Ballante at 150 pounds. At 190, Nick Wehmeyer downed #20 Robert Kucharczk and is now ranked #20 himself. Cayaen Smith went from unranked to #8 at 215 after beating then-#8 Cash Henderson. 

And we’ll end with a Top-10 upset: At 157, #8 Grigor Cholakyan of St. John Bosco beat Buchanan’s #4 Leo Contino at the 5 Counties Tournament. 

Upcoming State Dual Championships

Six state dual championships are coming during the next two weekends. First will be New York’s this Saturday, followed by Iowa, Nebraska, Louisiana, Tennessee and North Carolina the following weekend.

Tournaments for New York, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina will stream live here on Flo, while the Nebraska and Tennessee tournaments will be available as archives after the individual duals end.

Touching on a few of these tournaments, we’ll start with New York where there will be new dual state champs in both Division 1 and 2 as neither Tioga or Starpoint are in the field after both won a year ago. In both divisions, 12 teams will take part in four three-team pools with the winners advancing to a four-team bracket to determine the champion. 

In Division 1, Minisink Valley is looking to get back on top after winning in both 2020 and 2022 (there was no tournament in 2021). In D2, last year’s runner-up Central Valley Academy is the likely favorite.

In Iowa, regional dual tournaments will take place on Jan. 30 with the top 24 teams in each class (1A, 2A and 3A) competing at eight regionals per class. The top-ranked team at each regional hosts the event and gets a bye to the final with the other two teams dualing to face them. The eight winners advance to the state dual team tournament on Feb. 3 at the Xtream Arena in Coralville. 

Southeast Polk is the favorite in Iowa’s big-school class — Class 3A. In 2A, Osage, Mount Vernon and Sergeant Bluff-Luton are all in the mix, while Alburnett, Don Bosco and Wilton are the leaders in 1A.

Just to the west, Nebraska’s dual championships will also take place on Feb. 3 with the top eight teams battling it out. In Class A, the state’s biggest class, Millard South has won seven of the past eight tournaments and has dominated the state, even showing to be competitive nationally. 

Last year’s champs, Omaha Skutt Catholic, will battle it out with 2022 champs Bennington, Waverly and Blair in Class B. In Class C, Broken Bow won a year ago as well as in 2018 and 2019. The Class C champ in both 2020 and 2022 was Aquinas Catholic who dropped down to Class D last year and has dominated, winning the dual title in its first try last season.