MADISON — The Holmen High School boys wrestling team has all three of its WIAA individual state qualifiers alive for possible fifth-place finishes after they combined to sweep four matches during Friday morning’s session at the Kohl Center in Madison.
Freshman Rex Lancaster and Nathan Henderson won their only Division 1 bouts, and senior Jonathon Lamprich won twice in his bracket to advance to Saturday morning’s consolation semifinals.
Lancaster (45-6) had little trouble beating New Berlin West/East’s Everett Hilby (34-11) by technical fall at 106 pounds. Lancaster dominated from start to finish in an 18-3 victory that lasted 3 minutes, 41 seconds. It was a good recovery from Thursday’s quarterfinal loss to West Salem/Bangor’s Teghan Moore.
“It’s pretty hard,” Lancaster said when asked about putting a tough loss behind him. “You keep thinking about things you should have done or things you shouldn’t have given up.
“I didn’t really worry about (Hilby), I just went out and tried to get to my stuff.”
Henderson (42-5) lost his 120-pound quarterfinal match on Thursday night to West Bend West’s Ethan Bast — a previous state champion. He also recovered well and beat Wauwatosa West/East’s Nathan Mielke (30-8) by pin at 2:26.
“Obviously, you come here going for first place, but that didn’t happen,” Henderson said. “The next best is fifth, so you keep pushing for that and try to win them one match at a time.”
Lancaster meets Hortonville’s Evan Lesselyong (17-7) in his semifinal match, and Henderson draws Germantown’s Owen Becker (45-7) in his.
Lamprich (40-8) opened with an 8-3 win over Whitefish Bay’s Cyrus Butler (24-17) and followed that up with an 8-4 win over Luxemburg-Casco’s Logan Ellwanger (36-18) at 165. Lamprich meets Kaukauna’s Kolin DeGroot (43-8) in Saturday morning’s semifinals.
Senior Allison Weiss (26-18) was eliminated from the 120 bracket with a 12-0 loss to Grafton’s Ellie Federl (31-15) in the first consolation round, and senior Haley Dezelske (32-11) was knocked out of the 114 bracket by Menomonee Falls’ Izzie Evitch (35-4) on a 5-2 decision.
