Earning a distant 201.5 points to Deerfield’s 310.5, New Trier wrestling topped ten other schools, including rivals ETHS, to earn second place at the Central Suburban league tournament on Jan 21.

Three New Trier students earned championships, while various other students won second or third place prizes.

Freshman Matt McKenna said, going into the semifinals, “I think we’ve been doing really well.  We’ve had a lot of pins in the first round.”

Despite being a freshman, McKenna has been wrestling since he was in second grade and was able to make varsity as a freshman. McKenna scored sixth place in the 120 weight class.

Going into the semifinals, senior Nick Elias was similarly optimistic and said he was not nervous. He added “We have a lot of kids in the semi-finals, and we are one-for-one, one kid win, one kid lose.” Elias earned fourth place, after an upsetting cancellation championship which left the coaches and teammates on their feet in protest.

Elias Faced Glenbrook North for third place, and after the first two rounds ended 0-0, and the third round ending similarly tied 2-2, the match was thrown into overtime.

During overtime Elias was caught in a spladle hold, and though he eventually escaped, the referee called it for GBS, because overtime is sudden death. New Trier coaches started yelling, arguing that he had in fact escaped within the necessary time.

Despite such setbacks, many wrestlers on the team performed very well, according to junior Joey Klingler.

Junior Patrick Ryan won his championship in his weight class. Though Ryan started the final match ahead 2-0, by the end of the third round, with less than 30 seconds left in the final round, it was tied 3-3.

In an exciting finish, Ryan was pinned but broke free earning 1 point. He then pinned his Deerfield opponent for ten seconds, winning the match 6-3.

Additionally, senior Jake Lowell won his second championship in the 195 weight class. He earned a victory, finishing the match with 15 points to his Deerfield opponent’s 2.

“New Trier did pretty well,” Klingler said. “Coach set expectations pretty high, but I think he’s satisfied. Everybody wrestled pretty well.”

“We had three champs. Jakob Lowell got his second in a row, Jack Tangen and Patrick Ryan got their first championship.  They were second last year. Anytime you can win any titles is good,” said head coach Marc Tadelman.

Tadelman summarized the team’s performance saying  “We wrestled as hard as we can.”

Many wrestlers on the team seemed optimistic and excited about the team’s prospects heading into the end of the season and state competition.

When asked about the team’s prospects heading into the end of the season, Tadelman said “we just got to keep working hard, make a few adjustments and we’ll be ready to go.”