It was a big day Saturday for the Stanley-Boyd/Owen-Withee, as three wrestlers will advance to compete at the Division 2 WIAA State Individual Wrestling Meet in Madison this week.

Competing for his second consecutive championship will be junior Blaine Brenner who dominated his weight class at 120 and proved why he’s top-ranked at that level in the state.

As a team, the Orioles sent six wrestlers to the meet in what arguably is the toughest Sectional in the state. As a team, Stanley-Boyd/Owen-Withee placed sixth overall of 24 teams represented, with Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau/Melrose-Mindoro and Ellsworth one and two.

Along with Brenner, representing SB-OW at state will be seniors Preston Potaczek who took second place at 160 and Tyler Krizan who battled hard to take third at 285.

Sasha Nitz at 113, Russell Dorn at 138 and Joey McDermond at 145 also wrestled for the Orioles at the Sectional finals.

Coach Greg Burzynski was proud of the way his wrestlers competed.

“Even looking at this week and the matchups we had, I was kind of worried. Some of them were very tough matchups,” he said. “I knew we have good guys, but you never know what’s going to happen. The guys wrestled really well overall.

“At the beginning of the season, the six that were here were all guys we thought would be here. We thought some others would be too, don’t get me wrong. We knew had a good team this year. We wrestled well all year. This individual time is tougher, because our Regional was so tough. This Sectional is tough. This sectional – there are state place-winners that didn’t make it out of here today.

Brenner will have a bye and weigh-in Thursday and wrestle on Friday. Potaczek and Krizan will both wrestle Thursday.

The team will prepare for this week as they did in the weeks that led up to it.

“We’ll work hard. We’re not going to change a whole lo,” said Burzynski. “We’ll bring in the guys who came in last week to work with these guys and keep rolling and keep working hard,” said Burzynski. “We’ll go hard Monday and Tuesday. We’ll taper down Wednesday. Thursday we won’t wrestle but we’ll get a good sweat going. It’s a great experience for these kids.”

The Orioles came close to having four wrestlers at state. At 113, Nitz had a tough draw with eventual champion Tanner Andersen in his first match. Nitz fell 11-2 and went to face Osceola’s Thomas Oswald. Oswald scored 4-2 overtime win and went on to win third place for a trip to state.

Brenner pinned his first opponent in 3:13 and then dominated Ellsworth’s Cole Nelson in the semifinal match, scoring a 15-0 technical fall in 4:55. He won the championship match 14-0 to punch his ticket for a return trip to the Kohl Center in Madison.

At 38, Dorn fell in his lone match, 6-0. McDermond lost a close decision in his first match at 145 and advanced to the consolation round, were he was defeated.

At 160, Potaczek pinned his way to the championship match, in 2:42 and 2:39 respectively. He lost the title match and then had to stave off Chase Peltier in a wrestleback for second place. Potaczek made quick work of him scoring a fall in just over a minute.

At 285, Krizan drew eventual champion Logan Peterson in the first round and was narrowly defeated, 6-4, in overtime. He fought hard for his berth at state, scoring a 3-2 decision in his first consolation match and then claiming third place with a 10-6 decision.

Photos by John McLoone.

Photos by John McLoone.

Photo by John McLoone.