Four Bulldogs to make return trips to state wrestling tournament; Joles and Berg win sectional crowns

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EDGAR — To say that Boyceville’s wrestlers have been on a roller coast ride the past week might be a bit of an understatement.

In an eight-day span, the Bulldogs rode high as they celebrated a second consecutive regional championship and team sectional berth only to plummet to the bottom just three days later following a lopsided 66-9 loss to St. Croix Falls in the team sectional semifinal. They came full circle last Saturday with outstanding finishes in the strongest small-school sectional wrestling tournament in the state of Wisconsin.

Of the eight Boyceville wrestlers that competed in the 2020 WIAA Division 3 Individual Sectional tournament held at Edgar High School February 22, four will advance to this week’s WIAA Individual State Wrestling Championships at the Kohl Center in Madison.

Boyceville’s state quartet – juniors Trett Joles and Nate Stuart and sophomores Josiah Berg and Ira Bialzik – are no strangers to the pressures of a state tournament, they all competed in Madison a year ago.

“It was a good day, in probably one of the toughest sectionals I have been involved with when you have 11 number one (ranked) kids here, many other ranked wrestlers, and probably three of the top six teams in Division 3 are here with St. Croix Falls, Cadott and Stratford,” said Boyceville head coach Jamie Olson.

Trett Joles captured his third straight sectional title while Josiah Berg won his second. The Bulldogs’ two sectional winners will be joined by Nate Stuart and Ira Bialzik, who both copped third-place finishes, on the floor of the Kohl Center when the 2020 state tournament gets underway this Thursday, February 27 through Saturday, February 29.

Four other Bulldogs’ finished their respective seasons in Edgar last Saturday.

In his second sectional meet, sophomore Tyler Dormanen just missed the state cut placing fourth – only the top three finishers in each weight class earn a state berth.

Meanwhile, first-time sectional participants Brice Evenson, Nick Hillman and Aitor Lopez-Fernandez also saw their season come to an end.

“To get four was good,” added Olson. “Five would have been great. Tyler works hard and he deserved to go (to state) and he just came up a little short. I feel for him.”

“It was a good day for us. I am happy and excited for next weekend and we get four more kids that get put on the wall in the wrestling room and that is always exciting,” stated Olson.

Olson was also thrilled with the team’s top four finish.

Boyceville’s eight sectional participants accumulated 79.5 points which ranked the Bulldogs fourth. Stratford and Cadott, who each had seven state qualifiers, took the top two spots with Stratford scoring 159 to Cadott’s 140. St. Croix Falls came in third with 95 points and five state entrants. Like Boyceville, Clear Lake landed four state qualifiers and finished with 63 points to round out the top five in the 20-team tournament.

In a meet that featured several outstanding individual performances, two of the more impressive were turned in by Boyceville’s sectional championship duo.

Junior Trett Joles beat three state-ranked grapplers on his way to claiming a second consecutive sectional crown at 182 pounds.

The defending state champion and top-rated wrestler at that weight class, Joles improved to 43-1 on the season with a technical fall sandwiched between a pair of tournament opening and finishing  falls.

Joles began Saturday with a 3:51 pin of Stratford sophomore Raife Smart, who was garnering honorable mention status in the state’s poll.

Moving into the semifinals, Joles squared off against another honorable mention wrestler, senior Kees Hoogland of Phillips. Joles needed just 3:22 to bring this match to an end with an 18-3 technical fall.

Joles’ quickest effort of the day came in the gold-medal match against Cadott’s Steven Pfeiffer. It took Joles all of 1:39 to put the Hornet senior, who is state ranked as well, to his back for the title at 182 pounds.

Berg’s 3-0 performance in the 120-pound weight bracket was just as impressive.

The sophomore, who improved to 34-4, posted a pair of wins over his state-ranked opponent en route to securing a second straight sectional title. A year ago, Berg won the 106-pound title.

In his opening quarterfinal’s match, Berg bested Remington Ladd, a  Cameron senior, with a 12-7 decision.

Against fellow sophomore and sixth-ranked Kaleb Sonnentag of Cadott, Berg dominated the duo’s semifinal bout taking the win by major decision, 12-4.

Awaiting Berg, who is ranked third in the state, in the championship match was St. Croix Falls sophomore Mason Will, who was ranked tenth. Berg took charge early in  the match and went on to garner gold at 120 pounds with an 8-4 decision.

“Josiah and Trett wrestled really well today,” stated Coach Olson. “Those guys are dominant, their dominate wrestlers and they showed it today. They are fun to watch.”

Junior Nate Stuart and sophomore Ira Bialzik both finished their sectional effort with 3-1 marks and third-place medals at their respective weights of 126 and 138 pounds, each qualified for their second state meet.

Stuart, who placed second at 120 pounds in last year’s sectional tournament, pinned Phillips’ Jesse Bruhn at 5:06 of the quarterfinal match.

Aspirations of a title were dashed in the semis, however, as Stuart lost a heartbreaking 3-2 decision on the ultimate tie breaker to Shell Lake junior and sixth-ranked Tyler Schunck.

Stuart, who is ranked eighth in the weight class,  rebounded for pins in his next two matches to secure the bronze and a state berth. Stuart pinned Nick Fasbender of Cadott at 5:27 of the consolation semifinal and then for the third time in as many weeks, the Bulldog junior stuck Glenwood City freshman Gabe Knops in the second period of the third-place battle.

“I give a lot of credit to Nate Stuart who came back after a tough loss in that semifinal and to wrestle as well as he did in those wrestle backs showed a lot of heart and toughness,” noted Olson. “He composed himself and came back and wrestled really well.”

Unlike a year ago when Ira Bialzik lost in the opening round, the sophomore was determined to control his own fate this time around. Which he did with a 3:17 pin fall over Cameron’s Tommy Quinn in a 138-pound quarterfinal.

Bialzik drew once-beaten Elijah Lucio of Stratford in the semifinals. The eighth-ranked Hornet sophomore turned the tables on Bialzik and scored a second period pin and went on to claim the championship leaving Bialzik to battle his way through the consolation side for a state berth.

That quest began when he registered a 4:35 pin fall over Owen Miesbauer of Chequamegon in the consolation semifinals. An unranked Bialzik then knocked off St. Croix Falls’ Zach Clark, who had beaten him 6-1 in Tuesday night’s team sectional match,  in a wild 17-15 match to take third and earn a second trip to state.

Bialzik got a shot to wrestle back to second and was in a close match with Cadott’s Cole Pfeiffer when he was caught and pinned at 3:38 of the match.

“Ira Bialzik, what can you say. The kid won a 17-15 match to go to the state tournament, that was awesome,” Olson stated. “It was one of the best matches of the tournament so to come out on that was exciting, relieving – you lose some tough ones and win some tough ones – and that was one that was fun to win.”

Tyler Dormanen had a tough draw at 152 pounds and for the second straight year lost his first match in the sectional. But unlike 2019, Dormanen’s opening match defeat came to eventual sectional champion Nelson Wahl. Despite the 9-4 setback to the Cadott junior, Dormanen ended a reprieve when Wahl won his semifinal match and advanced to the finals.

Dormanen made the most of his second chance and pinned his consolation semifinal opponent Michael Kirch of Chequamegon in 3:06

But in the third-place match, Dormanen fell short of the win and a state berth when he was beaten 7-4 by St. Croix Falls’ junior Bennett Bergmann, who had also prevailed 2-1 over Dormanen in their team sectional match-up.

Boyceville’s three other sectional competitors, all first-timers, were unable to advance or place.

Foreign exchange student Aitor Lopez-Fernandez lost to top-ranked and eventual sectional champion Max Schwabe of Stratford. The senior pinned Lopez-Fernandez just 29 seconds into their quarterfinal match at 132 pounds. Aitor drew a spot in the consolation semifinals but was again pinned in the first period by another state-ranked wrestler, #7 Matt Anderson of Clear Lake, and eliminated from the competition. Anderson went on to place third.

113-pounder Brice Evenson and Nick Hillman, the Bulldogs’ 170-pounder, were not as fortune.  Both lost their quarterfinals’ matches and did not get to wrestle again.

“Nick Hillman, Brice Evenson, and Aitor Lopez-Fernandez, those three guys had a heck of a year and they shouldn’t hold their heads low, they need to keep their head high and be proud of what they accomplished,” said Olson, “Their weight classes were stacked. We ran into some horses with those guys. Aitor lost to the defending state champ, Brice Evenson lost to the kid that took third and Hillman’s kid went to state too, so we had tough draws there.”

Olson and his four state campetitors are looking to keep the good times rolling this weekend in Madison.

While Joles and Berg do not wrestle until Friday’s quarterfinal match, Stuart and Bialzik will be competing in Thursday night’s state preliminary round at the Kohl Center, action will start in Division 3 at 7:15 p.m.