Waconia Wrestling

Our co-ed youth and girls only club programs are currently in progress and began on November 13th. We are extremely excited for the year ahead with 127 total kids registered across our club programs this year, including 118 kids in our PreK-6th grade Co-Ed Youth Program, 22 in our K-12th grade Girls Program.

Registration for the year is now closed. Stay tuned for more updates on tournament opportunities, results, etc.

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:

• Joe Alger - Runner Up 5th/6th Grade 108#
• 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#

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, 2022, 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!

Platinum Golf Sponsors 2023

Checkout our Waconia Wrestling YouTube Channel for some great content and features of our youth and high school program wrestlers.