Waconia Wrestling

Our 2023 Waconia Wrestling Golf Classic & our top fundraising event for the year is approaching! See for our 2023 flyers with all the details! Our fundraising efforts from this event will be allocated towards a variety of needs for a K-12 program with an emphasis on developing our Wildcat Girls’ program & supporting areas impacted by district budget changes.

Hole Sponsorships: We are now collecting hole sponsorships from local business and friends/family of our Wildcat grapplers. In addition, we are seeking raffle & silent auction items. Even if golf isn’t your forte or you aren’t able to attend, there are many other ways you can contribute to the success of fundraising. If you are interested in either a bronze, silver, gold or platinum sponsorship or would like to donate to our silent auction, please send me a message! Feel free to reach out to members of our Board or Lisa Marsh with questions if you are new to hole sponsorships this year.

Livestream Sponsorships: New in 2023, we will also be looking to extend our live-streaming advertising options as part of our fundraiser. See in the below for more info! Sales and livestream sponsorship questions should go through our Livestream/Media Director, Jeff Katherman (email to jdkatherman@gmail.com). 

Contact Lisa Marsh @ lisamarshpharmd@gmail.com or a member of our WWC Board for all other questions. 

Waconia Wrestling Club has had an active spring/summer season so far with over 40 K-12th grade kids again participating in our homegrown Freestyle/Greco Program! See below for a recap of some of the results so far and some of the exciting events coming up where our kids will be competing.

April 29th-30th - U20 U.S. Open Freestyle Nationals - Recap

In Las Vegas, NV at the U.S. Open, Max McEnelly, 2022 UWW U17 World Bronze Medalist, wrestled extremely well in his first year at the U20/Junior age group level at 86kg and had an outstanding tournament going 5-1 with wins over Wyatt Voelker (Freshman at UNI), and returning UWW U20 79kg World Team Member, Brayden Thompson. Max ended up Runner-Up losing to fellow Minnesotan and UWW U20 86kg Silver Medalist, Bennett Berge of SDSU by score of 7-4. With the win, Berge secured a spot in the U20 World Team Trials that will be held on June 3rd/4th.

May 6th-7th MNUSA State Freestyle & Greco - Recap

Waconia Wrestling Club sent a strong contingent of youth and high school wrestlers to MNUSA Freestyle/Greco State in early May in Rochester, MN. Kudos to all the kids who partcipated, including:

Freestyle

Henry Cook (8U) - 4th Place, Oliver Turek (8U) - 4th Place, Lucas Turek (10U) - 3rd Place, Eddy Cook (10U) -6th Place, Beckett Marsh (14U) - 5th Place, Ian Olson (16U) - 4th Place, Vincent Halliday - 2nd Place, Carter Katherman (16U) - DNP, Wesley Hammarsten (16U) - DNP, Blake Miller (16U) - DNP, Jon Kopp (16U) - DNP

Greco-Roman

Vincent Halliday (16U) - 2nd Place, Carter Katherman (16U) - 5th Place, Jon Kopp (16U) - 6th Place, Blake Miller (16U) - DNP.

May 13th-14th USAW Northern Plains Regional Championships - Recap

Waconia Wrestling Club had a strong showing at the prestigious and always tough Northern Plains Regionals in Wisconsin Dells. This tournament acts as an automatic qualifier for the USAW Freestyle/Greco Nationals that are held annually mid-July in Fargo, ND.  Kudos to all the kids who partcipated, including:

Freestyle:

Vincent Halliday (16U) - 4th place, Carter Katherman (16U) - 4th place, Lincoln Vick (Junior) - DNP, Maverick Mueller (Junior) - DNP (lost blood round)

Greco:

Vincent Halliday (16U) - 4th place, Carter Katherman (16U) - 4th place

June 3rd - 17th Waconia Wrestlers Competing Across National Events in June

Across the month of June, we will have several kids competing in age group World Team Trials and National Duals tournaments as part of our MN National Dual Teams. So, mark your calendars for the first 3 weeks of June to watch them compete! All events will be streamed live on Flowrestling.org or the FloSports App.

6/3-6/4 Max McEnelly will be competing at the U20/Junior Freestyle World Team Trials in Geneva, Ohio. See the USAW Event website for more details and the schedule for this event. Max will be trying to make his 2nd straight age group level UWW World Team!

6/7-6/10 Carter Katherman and Vince Halliday, for the 2nd straight year, will be competing on Team Minnesota at the USAW 16U Freestyle/Greco National Duals in Loves Park, Illinois. See the USAW Event website for more details and the schedule for this event.

6/8-6/11 Becket Marsh will be making his debut with Team Minnesota at the USAW 14U/Schoolboy Freestyle/Greco National Duals in Oaks, Pennsylvania (outside Philadelphia). See the USAW Website for more details and the schedule for this event. 

6/14-6/17 Lincoln Vick and Maverick Mueller will be competing also with the MN National Team at the prestigious USAW 18U/Junior National Duals in Tulsa, Oklahoma. See the USAW Website for more details and the schedule for this event. 

Congrats to all our kids that competed in the NYWA post-season series, across Districts, Regionals and the State Championships! We had great participation this year and had a lot of fun hosting both the Individual and Team Regional Qualifiers as well. Thank you to all who helped to make it a super successful end of the year!

K-8 Individual Region 3 Results: Link

K-6 Team Region 3 Results: Link

K-6 Grade State Tournament Results: Our Waconia K-6 Team finished 4th out of 32 teams! Link 

K-6 State Individual:

• Henry Cook - 5th Place Kindergarten 55#
• Max Martin - 5th Place 1st/2nd Grade 90#
• Will Katherman - 6th Place 5th/6th Grade 84#
• Collin Meuwissen - 5th Place 5th/6th Grade 97#
• Joe Alger - Runner Up 5th/6th Grade 108#

Girls Division:

• Caroline Moyer - Champion K-3 56#
• Marissa Moyer - Runner Up K-3 45#

K-6 State Invite:

• Wil Chmielewski - Runner Up Kindergarten 45#
• Oliver Turek - Runner Up 1st/2nd Grade 50#
• Eddy Cook - 4th Place 3rd/4th Place 76# 
• Wyatt Chmielewski - 3rd Place 5th/6th 70#
• Will Beste - Runner Up 5th/6th 93#

7-8th Grade State Individual:

• Blake Miller - Runner Up 130#

7-8th Invite:

• Jacob Ess - Runner Up 125#
• Cooper Stejskal - 3rd Place 130#

Congrats to our youth wrestling team on a great performance at MNUSA! The K-6 dual team finished 4th overall in the team tournament. Also, the program sent 26 individual qualifiers/participants to the MNUSA Folkstyle State Tourney, allowing each kid to get valuable experience and test themselves against some of the state's best wrestlers.

Congratulations to the following individual place winners:

Girls

Marissa Moyer 6U 45# - State Champion

Breslyn Kirkpatrick 12U 60# - Runner Up 

Caroline Moyer 10U 57# - 3rd Place 

8U

Max Martin 85#- 2nd Place

Zander Holmlund 85# - 3rd Place

Oliver Turek 53# - 5th Place

10U 

Logan Kleinknight 60# - 6th Place

16U 

Vincent Halliday 220# - State Champion

Owen Vos 88# - 3rd Place

Ian Olson 100# - 3rd Place

Wes Hammarsten 132# - 5th Place

Sawyer Nemitz 170# - 6th Place

A lot of planning, effort and energy went into organizing and hosting Waconia Wrestling's annual Takedown Cancer, Hall of Fame Night & and Youth/High School Dual Events on Thursday, January 19th, 2023. All that attended and watched were rewarded by an evening to remember for the ages!

Waconia Wrestling Club's Youth Dual team started the night vs. New Prague's Youth squad, and the young Wildcats came out victorious by a score of 42-30. The kids did a great job preparing and wrestling hard, and was really special to be able to have this event at home "under the lights". This led to the JV matches (of which there were many wrestlers featured that were just in the youth program 1-2 years ago). Then, some emotional words and speeches were given this event's TD Cancer Sponsor Family, (Allen, Tara, Will, Jack and Cooper Koosmann) as Tara and Allen shared about their journey in Allen's battle against cancer. Many thanks for everyone who helped donate or bought raffle/merchandise that went into this fundraiser benefitting the Randy Shave Cancer Research and Community Fund. After this, long-time Varsity Head Coach, Kelly Wagener was inducted into the Waconia Wrestling Hall of Fame. The evening events built momentum into the Varsity Dual that featured our hometown #3AAA ranked Waconia Wildcats vs. #2AA ranked New Prague Trojans. This event had many story lines, including many nationally and state ranked wrestlers across both New Prague and Waconia's varsity lineups. This dual also featured a rematch of Waconia's Max McEnelly's only loss of the year, which was to New Prague's, Joey Novak (back in late December). The dual lived up to the hype with Waconia winning a come-from-behind victory (32-28) by the Wildcats winning the final 4 weights and McEnelly winning a close match (6-2) vs. Novak to redeem his loss from earlier in the season. Many thanks to all who attended.

Missed the event? Rewatch the entire event on Waconia Wrestling YouTube here: TD Cancer & New Prague vs. Waconia Livestream (available on YouTube) 

Congratulations to our 21 member Waconia Youth Dual Team which finished 5th overall out of 48 teams on Saturday (Jan 22nd) at STMA High School, which many teams consider the toughest tournament of the year. Our Waconia Youth Wrestling program has attended this tournament every year for the past 9 years, and this performance tied for the best finish in program history! The team gave every ounce of effort they could and beat Rocori 48-16, Hastings 36-34, lost to Stillwater 30-42, beat Farmington 43-29, beat Staples-Motley 38-34. Great job to all the kids for their hard work and effort!

On July 31st, Max McEnelly made program history by winning the Bronze Medal at the U17 World Freestyle Championships in Rome, Italy while competing at 92kg. Max's efforts also helped Team USA win its first ever U17 Team Title as well - setting the team scoring record as well with 4 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals!

USAW U17 Tournament Recap: Here's a great recap on the USA Wrestling website: https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Wrestling/Features/2022/July/31/MFS-wins-team-World-title.

Bronze Medal Post-Match Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXgUEqMDxuY

Here's a recap of the event:

Rd of 16: Max's first match was against Uzbekistan's Sherzod Poyonov - scoring , and Max was victorious winning 11-1 on the strength of 5 takedowns + 1 point lost for a lost challenge.

Quarterfinals: His next match was against Bulgaria's Andriyan Valkanov where Max won 11-0 with another 5 takedowns, qualifying him for the semifinals.

Semifinals: In the semi's he faced 2021 U17 Bronze Medalist and 2022 European Gold Medalist, Karil Kurugliyev from Kazakhstan. In a hard fought match, Max lost 11-2, falling to the Bronze medal match.

Bronze Medal: In the Bronze match, Max faced India's Sahil Jaglan where Max traded passivity (shot clock) points and Jaglan lost a challenge call giving Max the win for a 2-1 victory!

Waconia Wrestling will have 3 wrestlers this year competing at the prestigious USAW 16U/Junior Freestyle/Greco Nationals in Fargo, marking the most wrestlers Waconia has ever sent to Fargo in any year!  

Lincoln Vick will compete in the Junior Freestyle bracket at 138#. Lincoln was the MNUSA State Champion in Freestyle at 132# and also competed at USAW Northern Plains Regionals in Freestyle. This will be Lincoln's 2nd trip to Fargo Nationals. Lincoln will compete beginning on July 17-19th.

Carter Katherman will compete in the 16U Greco bracket at 120#. Carter finshed 4th place in Greco at USAW Northern Plains Regionals and placed 5th in Greco and 4th in Freestyle at the MNUSA Freestyle/Greco State Tournament. Carter also competed earlier in the summer at the 16U National Duals in both Freestyle/Greco for Team Minnesota. This will be Carter's first trip to Fargo Nationals. Carter will be competing July 20-21st.

Bradee Dwinell will compete in the Junior Greco bracket at 145#. Bradee competed in both styles at both MNUSA State placing 4th in Freestyle and 3rd in Greco. Bradee also competed in both styles at USAW Northern Plains Regionals. This will be Bradee's first trip to Fargo Nationals. Bradee will be competing on July 21-22nd.

Team Minnesota - Fargo Roster: https://theguillotine.com/2022/07/minnesotas-fargo-rosters-released/

Flowrestling Fargo Nationals Coverage: https://www.flowrestling.org/events/7417656-2022-usmcusaw-junior-and-cadet-national-championships/news

Platinum Golf Sponsors 2023

Checkout our Waconia Wrestling YouTube Channel for some great content and features of our youth and 7-12th grade program wrestlers.