River Valley wrestlers learn from dual meet lessons

The River Valley High School boys wrestling team traveled to Sparta last Tuesday night for a dual meet. Sparta won the meet 34-9.  “Sparta had a lot of veteran wrestlers in their upper weights which proved to be a deciding factor in the dual meet,” said River Valley co-head coach Dan Machovec. “We unfortunately did not have a full team due to many circumstances. Overall, we were pretty aggressive. I felt like we finally were able to be more offensive. We noticed that when someone attacked our legs, we struggled with sprawling and extending our opponent’s arms. That is something we will be focusing on in practice this week. The wrestlers did a great job of adjusting, though, because in our exhibition matches after the dual, we had far more success. We were getting pins instead of being pinned. That’s good to see. It shows the mental toughness of our wrestlers to forget the bad and move on to the next match. Even though the varsity dual didn’t go our way, we did find success in numerous exhibition matches.” Individual results for the dual are: 152: Landon Radtke (RIVA) over Brock Connelly (SPAR) (Fall 1:40). 160: Emmett Brooks (SPAR) over Ethan Alt (RIVA) (Fall 2:35). 170: Double Forfeit. 182: Corbin Hauser (SPAR) over Evan Alt (RIVA) (Fall 0:12). 195: Marcus Cox (SPAR) over (RIVA) (For.). 220: Hayden Brueggeman (SPAR) over Logan Tonstad (RIVA) (Fall 1:05). 285: Madden Connelly (SPAR) over Jacob Bindl (RIVA) (Fall 0:22). 106: Double Forfeit. 113: Double Forfeit. 120: Carter Erickson (SPAR) over Braden Prochaska (RIVA) (MD 10-0) 126: Double Forfeit. 132: Double Forfeit. 138: Double Forfeit. 145: Jimmy Jennings (RIVA) over Carson Kelsey (SPAR) (Dec 5-3).  This week the boys traveled to Viroqua Tuesday night to face off against the Viroqua Blackhawks before taking time off for Christmas break. They return to the mats on Friday, January 8, at Richland Center.