Dewey Krueger won his bracket as the Oconto Falls High School wrestling team finished 11th at the Battle of the Bay wrestling tournament Saturday at Bay Port High School.
Bay Port (559) won the tournament. Two Rivers (421) took second and Pewaukee (404) took third. Oconto Falls scored 304 points.
Krueger, a junior, won the 145-pound weight bracket, beating Seth Vosters of Freedom 4-3 in the championship match.
“A lot of the coaches thought 145 might be one of the toughest weight classes there,” Oconto Falls tri-head coach Marc Kinziger said. “When you look top to bottom, at previous qualifiers, it probably was. Nice day for him to come out and win.”
Krueger opened the day with a technical fall 43 seconds into his match with Michael Letter of Southern Door. After a bye in round two, Krueger beat Casey Crangle of Menomonee Falls by a 6-4 decision. He beat Two Rivers’ Chris Yauch 10-0 in the semifinal.
Brett Ash (138) took the fifth-place match from Pewaukee’s Trevor Greene by tie breaker. Ash was 4-1 on the day.
Bryce Ash (120) lost his fifth-place match to Bay Port’s Brady Shulfer by a 13-0 major decision.
“They had some nice days,” Kinziger said. “It was a tough tournament. Bay Port, wow, what a team they are putting together.”
The coach said the tournament was a good chance for the younger Oconto Falls wrestlers to see what it will take to be successful.
“We’re going to have to do a lot of improving if we have guys that want to go to Madison,” Kinziger said. “I think that was kind of an eye-opener for some of the boys.”
Sam Konitzer (132) took eighth place, despite injuring his knee.
“He was in a very tough weight class,” Kinziger said. “He wrestled good all day.”
Konitzer ended up losing a 6-4 decision in the quarterfinal to Evan Garcia of Green Bay Preble/East, who went on to win the bracket.
“If you look at where (Konitzer) finished, I would like to think he could have finished in the top three,” Kinziger said. “He did good.”
Kinziger also liked what heavyweight Calvin Steinmetz did, going 3-2 and finishing seventh.
Freshman Nate Trepanier (152) won a 9-8 decision over Little Chute’s Matt Vandenberg in the third round, but had trouble going up against older, more experienced wrestlers on his way to eighth place.
“Trepanier got a big win,” Kinziger said. “He was going up two or three weight classes. He got a big win, and then he ran into the buzz-saws there with it being older boys, more physical, bigger size.”
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