The 2023 Class AAA Champions are headed back to state after their dominant Section 3AAA tournament performance. With the Raiders earning the section’s number one seed, they were given a first-round bye and had to wait to discover their first opponent of the section meet.
The quarterfinals featured three matches: St. Thomas Academy (STA) versus Woodbury, Eagan versus Two Rivers, and East Ridge versus Park of Cottage Grove. Nearly all the matches for the evening were blowout wins for each team. Woodbury defeated STA 52-18 to advance and face Hastings. Eagan took down Two Rivers 54-14 and Park defeated East Ridge 65-12 to square up that side of the bracket. The closest team match of the night was Park defeating Eagan 40-27 to advance to the championship round.
Scoring in Wrestling is not too complicated once you understand the terms.
Decision - a match won by between one and seven points. This is worth three team points.
Major Decision - a match won by between eight and 14 points. This is worth four team points.
Tech Fall (TF) – a match won by 15 points or more. This is worth five team points.
Fall/Pin – a match won where one wrestler puts their opponent's shoulders to the mat for two consecutive seconds. This is worth six team points.
Also worth six team points are forfeits, Injury Default or Disqualification.
Semifinals - Hastings against Woodbury
Hastings versus Woodbury was never in doubt with Hastings jumping out to the early 31-0 lead before the Royals put up some team points. Here are the results of the semifinal’s individual matches.
Weigh class, wrestler’s names (school), result, time, match score if applicable, and cumulative team scores.
107 – William Bainbridge (Hastings) over Adrian Andrada (Woodbury) TF 16-1. H-5, W-0.
114 – Gavin Lambert (Hastings) over Pierce Osburn (Woodbury) Fall 2:50. H-11, W-0.
121 – Blake Beissel (Hastings) over Calvin Calderon (Woodbury) Fall 1:43. H-17, W-0.
127 – Trey Beissel (Hastings) over Caleb Howe (Woodbury) Maj 11-1. H-21, W-0.
133 – Jack Bainbridge (Hastings) over Dino Tokin (Woodbury) Maj 14-1. H-25, W-0.
139 – Mark Svoboda (Hastings) over Jonah Coffey (Woodbury) Fall 2:59. H-31, W-0.
145 – Alex Braun (Woodbury) over Fletcher Peterson (Hastings) Fall 2:30. H-31, W-6.
152 – Kasen Esterby (Hastings) over Chris Meyers (Woodbury) Fall 4:56. H-37, W-6.
160 – Brad Little (Woodbury) over Devon Yang (Hastings) Fall 1:50. H-37, W-12
172 – Creed Peterson (Hastings) over Austin Martin (Woodbury) Fall 1:40. H-43, W-12.
189 – Lucas Poellinger (Hastings) over Luke Puglisi (Woodbury) Fall 2:47. H-49, W-12.
215 – Derrick Steinke (Hastings) over Mitch Folks (Woodbury) Fall 1:23. H-55, W-12.
285 – Tom Conner (Hastings) over Carter Nickelson-Sinclair (Woodbury) Fall 0:34. H-61, W-12.
Hastings soundly defeated the Royals 61-12 and only needed to wait a short time to learn they would be facing Park of Cottage Grove in the Championship dual.
Championship: Hastings vs Park of Cottage Grove
Hastings vs Park of Cottage Grove was more of the same dominance by the Raiders. Hastings jumped out to an early 30-0 lead before Park scored their first team points. Zack Carr vs Mark Svoboda is one of those matchups that seems to happen every time Park and Hastings compete. It is always a fun match to watch, but Carr seems to have Svoboda’s number more often than not, and on Friday, that was the case. It was a close match, but Carr managed to get the win.
Blake Beissel, who has been wrestling at 121 pounds this season, wrestled up a weight class in the section finals, Head Coach Tim Haneberg explained.
“Blake saw that they were going to probably forfeit at his weight class, and he is the one who wanted me to bump him up to the heavier weight class and take on a state-ranked kid. It takes a special person to want to take on that challenge and to take on a state-ranked kid a weight class above his normal class.”
Derrick Steinke broke the single-season pin record held by current teammate Blake Beissel and former teammate Austin Leflay. The new record is 31 pins with the opportunity for more to come for Steinke.
“I knew I was close,” said Steinke after the match. “I was really just focused on winning by points at first then going for pins. It feels pretty good to have that record and we’ll be adding more over the next two weeks.”
“It’s pretty cool, right now, Blake Beissel is tied for the most career pins at 105. That is a record that has stood for about 20 years. Then Derrick beats last year's record by Austin Leflay and Blake… we just have amazing kids in our lineup right now, and dangerous kids who are willing to go out there and get six points for us every single time,” added Haneberg.
Here are the individual results for the championship round.
107 – William Bainbridge (Hastings) over Nolan Bloch (Park) Fall 1:49. H-6, P-0.
114 – Gavin Lambert (Hastings) over Jackson Jubinal (Park) Fall 1:21. H-12, P-0.
121 – Rocco Iallonardo (Hastings) over Unknown (Unattached) Forf. H-18, P-0.
127 – Blake Beissel (Hastings) over Landen Brooks (Park) Dec 5-0. H-21, P-0.
133 – Trey Beissel (Hastings) over Kyler Jubinal (Park) TF 20-5. H-26, P-0.
139 – Jack Bainbridge (Hastings) over Layne Frandrup (Park) Maj 12-4. H-30, P-0.
145 – Zack Carr (Park) over Mark Svoboda (Hastings) Fall 4:28. H-30, P-6
152 – Fletcher Peterson (Hastings) over Joey Chilton (Park) Fall 1:43. H-36, P-6.
160 – Gunnar Mullen (Park) over Hunter Hoff (Hastings) TF 15-0. H-36, P-11.
172 – Creed Peterson (Hastings) over Dylan Richardson (Park) Fall 1:22. H-42, P-11.
189 – Cristobal Estrada (Hastings) over Samuel Lankow (Park) Maj 12-0. H-46, P-11.
215 – Derrick Steinke (Hastings) over Jairus Boston (Park) Fall 0:57. H-52, P-11.
285 – Elijah Christopher (Hastings) over Jesse Wright (Park) Fall 1:11 H-58, P-11.
The Section 3AAA Championship win sends the Raiders back to the State Tournament to defend their Class AAA title on Thursday, February 29 with the first round of wrestling to begin at 9:00 a.m.
“Our kids are wrestling so phenomenally right now they are peaking at the right time. They're working hard in the room, and tonight just really showed how much effort and time they're putting in the room and it paid off tonight. They wrestled absolutely phenomenally,” said Haneberg after the win.
“So, we got the individual tournament next Saturday, and we're looking to send as many kids as we can. We follow up that next week and now we're going to be wrestling Thursday at the Xcel Energy Center as a team. Friday we're going to be having our boys individuals wrestle on Saturday. We're going to have our four girls start Saturday as well followed by the boys again, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” added Haneberg.
The Raider wrestlers are fired up and they are looking to repeat their state victory once again at Xcel in a few weeks. Thursday, March 2, 2023 was an absolute blast to be part of. To watch these kids fight back from a 32-9 deficit and win the state title 33-32 is still emotional to look back upon. It was a long day and one that Raider fans who were there in person will likely never forget. If you can get out of work and go to watch these kids in action on their biggest stage, do it. Get to Xcel Feb. 29, Mar. 1 and 2 and cheer loud for these kids, you won’t regret it.
