By Bruce Karnick

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The Minnesota State High School League state wrestling tournament was held at Xcel Energy Center Mar. 3-5. 24 teams made up the A, AA, AAA brackets for the team tournament on Thursday.

Hastings won the Section 3AAA meet and made the trip to Xcel as the fourth seed of the state tournament. That put them against Anoka, the Section 7AAA champions, in the first match.

Trey Beissel kicked things off for Hastings at 106 defeating Gabrielle Bragg by decision 5-0. Beissel was clearly frustrated during the majority of the match. It was not clear if it was something that his opponent was doing or him not being able to take advantage of opportunities to score more points.

Blake Beissel wrestled up at 113 and pinned Cayden Ban at the 3:15 mark of the match. Hastings had the lead 9-0.

Mark Svoboda took down Garrett Wittek by decision 8-2, adding three more points to the Raider team total. The coaching staff seemed to agree that the 120 match was a pivotal win for Hastings and it should have been a huge x-factor in a potential win.

Jack Bainbridge at 132 gave Hastings another decision win, 11-5. The fourth straight win for Hastings, and things were looking very promising. Hastings 15 – Anoka 0.

This is where things went south for the Raiders. Peyton Erickson was pinned, Creed Peterson followed suit and Anoka was right back in the mix, 15-12.

Josh Route took on Brendan Howes at 145 in a surprising loss for Hastings. Route dropped a major decision 22-8 and that gave Anoka the lead 16-15.

Coaches have a game plan based off scouting and other factors. There are matches that they consider toss ups that could go either way, then there are matches they truly hope to win and matches they look at as needing an exceptional performance to win. Route has been spectacular all season for Hastings and his match was one of those toss up matches. The coaching staff believed it would be a very competitive match, but unfortunately for Hastings, it was not.

Fletcher Peterson joined the fray next, losing by fall at 2:36. 22-15 Anoka.

Aiden Erickson was also pinned, but he made it until the 5:28 mark of the match. 28-15 Anoka.

Ian Pepple fell by major decision 11-1 extending Anoka’s lead 32-15.

Rico Cooper pinned Luke DeChene closing the gap 32-21. Tyler Miller was pinned at 1:25 and Anoka sealed the Raiders fate, sending them to the consolation bracket.

Dylan Bartz lost by a 5-0 decision giving Anoka 41 points. Blake Clemons pinned his opponent, but it was too little too late. The Raiders fell 41-27.

The first-round loss put Hastings in the consolation bracket and that meant bouncing right back to wrestle at 11:00.

Head Coach Tim Haneberg gave a quick rundown of the Anoka matchup, “First of all, it's very, very tough Anoka team and basically it came down to one match, a toss-up match, we lost. Then different things, we kind of put different kids in the lineup after that. So, the team score wasn't as close as we thought it was going to be.”

Apple Valley was the next opponent and the coaches moved some guys around in the various weight classes.

106 – Blake Beissel (Hastings) over Louis Prouty (Apple Valley) Major Decision 12-2 113 – Austin Laudenbach (Apple Valley) over Trey Beissel (Hastings) Major Decision 12-2 120 – Keiichi Kong (Apple Valley) over Mark Svoboda (Hastings) Major Decision 14-4 126 – Jack Bainbridge (Hastings) over Tyler Laudenbach (Apple Valley) Decision 5-2 132 – Jayden Haueter (Apple Valley) over Peyton Erickson (Hastings) Tech Fall 15-0 138 – Creed Peterson (Hastings) over Ian Haueter (Apple Valley) Fall 5:16 145 – Josh Route (Hastings) over Parker Elliott (Apple Valley) Decision 5-1 152 – Aiden Erickson (Hastings) over Travis Bender (Apple Valley) Major Decision 13-0 160 – Marcell Booth (Apple Valley) over Derrick Steinke (Hastings) Major Decision 14-2 170 – Zander Hallis (Hastings) over Max Elliott (Apple Valley) Decision 8-4 182 – Ian Pepple (Hastings) over AJ Garcia (Apple Valley) Decision 10-3 195 – Jericho Cooper (Hastings) over Parker Muth (Apple Valley) Major Decision 15-4 220 – Conner Elliott (Apple Valley) over Austin Leflay (Hastings) Decision 10-7 285 – Blake Clemons (Hastings) over Jalen Burke (Apple Valley) Fall 1:30 Hastings defeated Apple Valley 36-20 “We came back next round against Apple Valley, which is always nice to beat them, obviously. Then the kids wrestled great in that one, and they helped us get to top six here for the last one,” explained Haneberg.

The difficult part of losing that first round meant the best the Raiders could hope for as a team was fifth place and they were going up against a very strong Northfield group.

106 – Trey Beissel (Hastings) over Caden Staab (Northfield) Decision 7-3 113 – Blake Beissel (Hastings) over Matthew Dettling (Northfield) Fall 1:23 120 – Keith Harner (Northfield) over Mark Svoboda (Hastings) Decision 4-3 126 – Beau Murphy (Northfield) over Jack Bainbridge (Hastings) Decision 6-4 132 – Jackson Barron (Northfield) over Peyton Erickson (Hastings) Fall 2:56 138 – Jake Messner (Northfield) over Creed Peterson (Hastings) Fall 1:11 145 – Josh Route (Hastings) over Brody Gorr (Northfield) Fall 1:57 152 – Jayce Barron (Northfield) over Aiden Erickson (Hastings) Fall 2:28 160 – Zander Hallis (Hastings) over Owen Murphy (Northfield) SV-1 7-5 170 – Darrin Kuyper (Northfield) over Derrick Steinke (Hastings) Fall 0:48 182 – Ian Pepple (Hastings) over Ryan Kuyper (Northfield) Decision 8-5 195 – Jericho Cooper (Hastings) over Nickolas Mikula (Northfield) Fall 3:02 At this point in the match, Hastings had a shot at winning the dual. The score was 27-30 in favor of Northfield with Austin Leflay and Blake Clemons due up. Leflay’s match had a lot of pushing at first with the big guys getting a feel for each other. At the 1:28 mark of the first round, Mason Pagel from Northfield was pushing Leflay out of bounds when somehow the two collided. It is unclear if Pagel tripped and fell forward, if one of them pulled the other, or something else, but Leflay ended up headbutting Pagel and Pagel went down. The referee assigned a point for unsportsmanlike conduct to Pagel.

In discussions with the reporters on the sidelines, the agreement was that it did not seem intentional, but the point was awarded. That created a problem for Hastings. As it sits, Hastings needed to win the last two matches by decision or better to win the dual. If Pagel was unable to continue, Northfield would be awarded six points and the match would be out of reach. After several minutes of attending to Pagel, he was indeed unable to continue, and the meet was mathematically over. The look on Leflay’s face said it all. He was disappointed in the entire scenario.

220 – Mason Pagel (Northfield) over Austin Leflay (Hastings) Injury 1:28 285 – Blake Clemons (Hastings) over Joseph Schulz (Northfield) Fall 0:57 Northfield defeated Hastings 36-33 and that put the fourth seed Raiders in to the sixth place for Class AAA.

Haneberg ended the team discussion with, “We’ve got to switch our focus now to individuals and focus on those 13 kids, we’ve got the 11 boys and two girls. Just take it one match at a time. That first one is the most important one, if you lose that one, you're not guaranteed a second one. So, we're going to make sure that first one we take care of business here, and then we'll keep chipping away after that.”