Four Wrestlers Moving On
ROCHESTER – A quality quartet of area wrestlers made their way through one tough regional Saturday.
A pair of Warsaw wrestlers and a Tippecanoe Valley duo all earned semistate berths with top four finishers at the loaded Rochester Regional.
Freshman Kyle Hatch continued his stellar season for the Tigers. Hatch placed second at 106 pounds, losing a 4-0 decision to Drew Hildebrandt of Penn in the title match.
Senior Anthony Hendrickson also extended his campaign for Warsaw by placing fourth at 195 pounds.
Devin Childers and Garrett Bell will move on to next weekend to represent the Vikings. Junior Childers notched a third place finish at 132 and sophomore Bell placed fourth at 170.
Hatch is now 31-5 on the mat this season for coach Justin Smith’s squad. Childers is 35-3, Bell 33-3 and Hendrickson 24-9.
The area had a total of 20 grapplers compete in the regional, including seven each from Warsaw and Valley and six from Triton.
No. 3 Penn dominated the regional as the Kingsmen piled up 236 points behind eight individual champions. Mishawaka was second with 131 points and host Rochester was third with 69.
Warsaw tied for 10th place in the final team standings with 24 points. Valley finished in 14th place with 15 points.
The top four finishers in each weight class advance to the Merrillville Semistate next Saturday. They will be joined by qualifiers from regionals at Calumet, Crown Point and Logansport.