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NWC Wrestling Qualifies Everyone For Nationals
The fourth-ranked Northwest College wrestling team fulfilled the number one goal of head coach Jim Zeigler on Saturday by qualifying all 10 of its members to the NJCAA national championship tournament. The Trappers crowned two champions at the West Central Zone championships and placed second as a team.
“The biggest news is we got them all through,” Zeigler said of the team. “The kids wrestled pretty well. At times we made some costly errors, but we were able to rally back.”
Northwest crowned a pair of champions on Saturday in Chanute, Kan. Freshmen Nathaniel Garcia (149) and Miles Nixon (184) ran through the regional bracket unscathed to earn championship titles.
“Miles was one of the highlights of the weekend for us,” said Zeigler. “He wrestled well. He was just methodical. He kept his matches low scoring and just went about his business winning it. Nate actually struggled in his early rounds, but went out and tech falled his guy in the finals. He just caught on to the guy’s rhythm on the mat and wrestled an outstanding match.”
Jaksen Cotterell (157), Bernie Dupuy (165) and Keithen Cast (174) all advanced to the championship match before losing.
“Keithen’s match went to double overtime. There was a scramble at the end and the other guy came out on top,” said Zeigler. “It was Keithen’s first tournament back and he looked good. I’m not worried about him. The national championship match could be between those same two guys.”
As for Dupuy and Cotterell, Zeigler said he had some concerns. “Bernie wrestled well to get to the finals, but then he fell behind early and tried to do something risky and wound up getting pinned in the first period,” Zeigler said. “He had plenty of time left to wrestle. We didn’t need to be taking chances in that position. Jaksen snuck by his first two guys and again had some mistakes that kept things closer than they should have been.”
It is those errors that most concern Zeigler heading into the national tournament.
“We had matches that we controlled for 6:50, but because of one big mistake in those other 10 seconds, we either lost or were fighting to win,” Zeigler said. “The mistakes we made were big mistakes, and that’s concerning me going into the national tournament.”
For instance, Zeigler noted redshirt freshman Kamron Day was winning both his semifinal match and his third-place match in the 125-pound division. That bracket featured four of the top five wrestlers nationally at that weight.
“He’s got the No. 1 kid in the semifinals and he has the match won, then he makes a mistake and gets pinned,” Zeigler said. “The third-place match is the same way. He’s up against the No. 2 guy. He’s winning, and he gets taken down at the buzzer and wound up fourth. He’s right there. He just needs to finish the deal.”
Justin Gardner added a third-place finish at 133 pounds. Colton Thornton also placed third for the Trappers at 141. At the upper weights, Ben Price pulled in a third-place finish for Northwest at 197 pounds while Sean Sullivan finished the day with a 2-2 record, good enough for fourth place in the 285-pound division.
Those 10 wrestlers will take this week off from competition and prepare for the NJCAA national championships in Rochester, Minn. The tournament will take place Feb. 23-25. Brackets for the 10 weight classes should be released later this week.
As a team, the Trappers placed second behind No. 2 Labette in the final zone standings. The Grizzlies finished with 108 team points. Northwest was a comfortable second with 83.5. Colby placed third with 69.5 points. None of the other schools finished with more than 50 points despite six of the schools in attendance receiving mention in the final NJCAA regular season team rankings.
“The happiest thing is we qualified all 10,” said Zeigler. “The concerning thing is the errors we made. We can’t be doing that going to the national tournament. That’s something we’ll look to address these next two weeks.”