The Whitewater Wrestling Team concluded their season this weekend with five competing on the Kohl Center floor in Madison. The format of the tournament was different this season with each competitor being guaranteed two matches over the weekend.
The team wrestled well throughout the weekend, but unfortunately 3 of them were unable to come off victorious even thought they had given it their all on the mat. All of the losses the students took ended up being to opponents that placed in the top six and made podium on Saturday night.
Jasen Porras, Traysen Thomason, and Marianna Kubicz each competed on Thursday night and Friday morning but had some tough challenges in front of them, coming up short.
Connor Friend started off the tournament with a very strong opponent who was a great rider on top. This was a tough loss, as all are in the state tournament, and he had to regroup and come back on Friday morning to stay in the medal hunt. Connor saw an opponent from Belmont/Platteville, whom he had lost to 4 weeks ago. Connor wrestled a great match coming out on top 4–1. This placed him in the consolation semifinals on Saturday morning. Connor had an opponent that was very good at defense, which made it difficult to get to his offense, which he is very good at. In the end, Connor fell just short of reaching his goal of being on the podium.
Jarvis Porcaro had a very good tournament. He started the tournament on Thursday evening with a nice technical fall victory in the opening round setting him up for a quarter final match against a state runner up from Richland Center. Jarvis wrestled an outstanding match, coming out with 10-8 victory, putting him into the state semifinals on Friday night. In this match, Jarvis wrestled against the number 1 seed in the tournament and came out very strong with an early takedown. Entering the 3rd period, Jarvis was down 7-5, but that was as close as it got. Jarvis ended up dropping the match, which was very disappointing to him as he self-analyzed his match right away and knew his errors in the 3rd period. He stayed positive with himself, which has been a huge battle for him to overcome since last season. This season, Jarvis was able to stay in the mental mindset, even during tough times. On Saturday morning, Jarvis came back to compete in the 3rd place match but lost the match, thus finishing in 4th place in the state. Jarvis had set his goals after last season to be in the state finals, and although he came up short of that goal, he was upbeat with his weekend and knows this is just one chapter of his life of wrestling. He will move forward working toward collegiate goals.
The weekend saw the close of some stellar high school careers from Jarvis, Jasen, Connor, and Traysen. They will be missed by the program, and we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.