The Wayne State wrestling team competed last week in Sioux City, Iowa at the Sioux City Open Tournament. NCAA, NAIA and DII schools all competed in the tournament but Wayne State and other smaller schools made sure to bring the competition. The Wildcats will be competing in the Winona NCWA Invite, in Winona, Minnesota on February 16.

Wayne State wrestlers are selling $5 Godfather’s coupons to help out the wrestlers and give students or faculty deals on pizza while supporting the wrestling program.

Wrestlers on the team are freshmen Angel Rojo and Julio Sanchez. The lone sophomore on the team is Evan French. The junior class includes Tommy Nelson, Ethan Fitzler, Gerald Kenkel, Hunter Weiss, Melvyn Carreto and Tyson Cisneros. The Wildcats only have one senior, Matthew Reeves.

“We competed well in our open tournament after we had our national duals against our club competition, so we were facing some varsity programs like Grand View and Morningside,” Weiss said.

Weiss went 3-2 over the weekend and ended his two-week stretch with a record of 8-3. Weiss competes in the 149-pound weight class and has been a consistent wrestler throughout this year.

Wrestling against the NCAA and NAIA have kept this team strong and has helped them improve in club wrestling. Club wrestling presents challenges for the team, but competing against higher level schools in DI and DII helps each wrestler improve at a faster rate.

“Little bit more competitive, like NCAA and NAIA divisions, we did pretty good we wrestled all three periods in most of them, we thought we did good,” Reeves said.

Since the beginning of the season Weiss, Reeves and Cisneros have stepped up and become leaders of the team and have shown there teammates that they can lead for this team.

Most of the Wayne State wrestlers competition has been from Grandview and Morningside, two of those schools are like Wayne that are small but are competing with the DI schools.

WSC wrestling will compete next Saturday in Winona, Minnesota, then will travel down to Dallas for their first qualifier.

On February 28, the Wildcats will travel down to Dallas, Texas for the Southwest Conference National Qualifier. Three years ago, WSC sent seven Wildcats to the National Tournament in Allen, Texas.

Kenkel, Weiss and Fitzler all have been selected in the top 20 of the NCWA National rank selected by the coaches in DII.

WSC looks to finish at the top of the standings and again take more than seven when they did that three years ago. Nationals will be on March 14-16 in Allen, Texas.

Wayne State will finally finish up their season with a banquet on April 14, at noon.