Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall senior wrestling captains (left to right) Aidan Mattison, Gavin Schaefer and Landon Marthaler accept the Section 3AA championship trophy after Marshall's finals victory over New Ulm on Friday at Marshall High School. The win sends Marshall to state as a team for the second time ever and first time since 2019.

MARSHALL — For the second time in school history, the Marshall boys wrestling team is headed to the state tournament as a team. Fittingly hosting on their home mat, the Tigers topped Worthington 55-12 in Saturday’s semifinal match before taking down New Ulm 33-20 in the championship, which was a rematch of Feb. 8th’s Big South Conference championship.

“I practiced four years with these guys just for this moment right now,” Marshall senior Landon Marthaler, one of the team captains, said.

While the Tigers have sent many individuals to the state tournament in recent years, the Tigers’ Section 3AA championship win over New Ulm on Saturday allows this year’s team to join the 2019 state runner-up Tigers as the only Marshall teams in the tournament.

“It just shows how much we’ve been improving since we were little. We’ve all been wrestling with each other for a long time and it shows our hard work,” Marshall senior Josh Kraft said.

While this is the first appearance for the current iteration of Tigers as a team, many of them have been as individuals before. Lincoln Christenson was last year’s 107 individual runner-up, Marthaler placed fourth in 121, Brayden Chandler placed sixth in 152 and Aidan Mattison and Gavin Schaefer qualified in 189 and 215.

“I think we’re just going to have more confidence in ourselves, knowing that we did it as a team and that we can all do it individually too,” Marthaler said when asked what that prior individual state experience does for the team goals.”

The team state tournament is slated for Feb. 27 at the Xcel Energy Center, with seeding still yet to be determined. Before then, Marshall will head to the individual section tournament on Saturday at Dawson-Boyd, starting at 10 a.m.

“[We have to] just keep working in the wrestling room and not look ahead. Just go match-to-match, that’s what our coach tells us every time,” Kraft said when asked what the team needs to do in order to keep its momentum rolling into the Class AA tournament.

CHAMPIONSHIP

New Ulm 20

Josh Kraft came up with what was effectively the clinching pin in Marshall’s section championship match against New Ulm. With the Tigers leading 24-12 in 172, Kraft got a takedown within the opening seconds of the match and quickly earned a first-period pin from there to finalize Marshall’s state tournament berth.

“I had no clue that I was sealing the deal when I was going out there,” Kraft said. “I wasn’t even thinking about that, I was just going out there and wrestling my best.”

The Tigers jumped out to a 9-0 lead after the dual’s first pair of matches. In 107, Keynan Coequyt got a quick pair of takedowns and an escape to lead 7-2 after the first period. He steadily built his lead from there, clinching the 18-8 major decision with an escape and a takedown in the final period.

“Keynan getting a big win on bottom and just moving a few guys around, like at my weight, and saving three team points [was the difference],” Marthaler said when asked what allowed Marshall to pull away by such a wide margin after defeating New Ulm by just 4 points in the Big South Championship. “Keynan saved 7 team points compared to last time, so just lots of little wins gets us to the big finish.”

In 114, Lincoln Christenson completed a trio of takedowns to jump out to a 9-2 lead. While he wasn’t quite able to earn the pin in the second, a 4-point near-fall just ahead of the buzzer gave him the 19-4 technical fall victory.

Still, New Ulm rallied right back, taking down Levi Kraft via 16-1 technical fall in 121 and Gavin Williams via 13-3 major decision in 127 to tie up the match at 9-9.

Landon Marthaler regained the Marshall lead with a 10-1 major decision in 133, but again New Ulm stayed right on Marshall’s tail with a 4-1 decision in 139. Dawson DeCamp earned an escape in the second period of his 139 match to go into the final period up 1-0, but an escape and a takedown in the third period sunk him.

From there, however, Marshall started to roll. Tyson Louwagie went into the final period of his 145 match trailing 1-0 but started the third period with the tying escape before getting a go-ahead takedown with 25 seconds remaining. A reversal for New Ulm made it 4-3, but Louwagie outlasted his opponent to hand on for the win.

Drew Chandler followed Louwagie’s win with a 4-0 decision in 152, giving Marshall a 19-12 edge for its first multi-match lead since 114. Brayden Chandler followed up with a 15-0 technical fall in 160 to bring Marshall to the precipice of victory.

With the match sealed, New Ulm took down Aidan Mattison via 11-6 decision. While the possibility of New Ulm tying the match and winning via total points tiebreaker was still theoretically in play, Mattison’s limiting the Eagles to a 3-point decision officially sealed the deal.

Gavin Schaefer jumped out to an early lead in 215 before claiming a 7-1 decision, while Brooks Hess fell via pin in 285 to give the Eagles some extra window dressing.

SEMIFINALS

Marshall 55, Worthington 12

Worthington picked up a win by decision against Keynan Coequyt in 107 to take an early lead but Lincoln Christenson responded with a pin in 114 to put the Tigers on top.

A first-period takedown gave Levi Kraft an early lead but the two remained locked in a stalemate from there until Kraft picked up another pair of points to start the third round and held on from there for the 5-0 decision.

Gavin Williams took the mat for Marshall in 127 against Ethan Nixon and took just 46 seconds to earn another 6 Marshall points with the pin.

A pair of takedowns gave Landon Marthaler a 6-2 lead in the first period of his 133 bout. He continued to dominate from there as his lead ballooned to 18-5 before he settled for a win by technical fall at the end of the first period.

In 139, Dawson DeCamp needed just 19 seconds to earn the pin against Worthington’s Miguel Moreno, bringing Marshall’s lead up to 26-3 in the semifinal dual.

Tyson Louwagie got on the board first with a takedown 20 seconds into his 145 match. He slowly worked his opponent closer to the ground before finally securing the pin with 49 seconds remaining in the first period.

Noah Frazee got the first takedown in 152 but Worthington’s Dalton Larson got an escape and finished the first period with a 4-3 lead. A 4-point near-fall gave Finke an 8-3 advantage halfway through the second period.

An escape brought Frazee 1 point closer to Larson but another takedown helped Finke capture the 11-4 decision. Still, Marshall recouped the lost points and then some when Brayden Chandler and Josh Kraft each earned first-period pins in 160 and 172, sealing the dual with Marshall leading 44-6.

Gavin Schaefer started 215 out strong with a pair of takedowns, broken up by a Carlos Martinez escape, to finish the first period with a 6-1 edge. After starting the second period below, Schaefer got an escape and a takedown to bolster his lead up to 10-1 before finishing the period with a 13-2 lead and ending the match with a 19-4 technical fall in the third.

Brooks Hess won by forfeit in 285 to close out the win.

Marshall was pinned just once in the semifinals, with Eh Kwor going down in 189.

RESULTS

Marshall 55, Worthington 12

107: Dominic Larson (WORT) over Andrew Yang (MARS) (Dec 10-5) 114: Lincoln Christenson (MARS) over Sam Dagel (WORT) (Fall 0:30) 121: Levi Kraft (MARS) over Kian Ling (WORT) (Dec 5-0) 127: Gavin Williams (MARS) over Ethan Nixon (WORT) (Fall 0:48) 133: Landon Marthaler (MARS) over Christian Dailey (WORT) (TF 21-5 1:47) 139: Dawson DeCamp (MARS) over Miguel Moreno (WORT) (Fall 0:21) 145: Tyson Louwagie (MARS) over Preston Kumi (WORT) (Fall 1:12) 152: Dalton Larson (WORT) over Noah Frazee (MARS) (Dec 11-4) 160: Brayden Chandler (MARS) over Kaden Finke (WORT) (Fall 0:34) 172: Joshua Kraft (MARS) over Brayden Raymo (WORT) (Fall 1:11) 189: Chase Byrne (WORT) over Eh Kwor (MARS) (Fall 1:07) 215: Gavin Schaefer (MARS) over Carlos Matinez (WORT) (TF 19-4 4:33) 285: Brooks Hess (MARS) over (WORT) (For.)

New Ulm 20

107: Keynan Coequyt (MARS) over Regan Johnson (NUA) (MD 18-8) 114: Lincoln Christenson (MARS) over Braydon Miller (NUA) (TF 22-4 4:00) 121: Alex Portner (NUA) over Levi Kraft (MARS) (TF 16-1 4:30) 127: Kane Johnson (NUA) over Gavin Williams (MARS) (MD 15-3) 133: Landon Marthaler (MARS) over Tegan Kral (NUA) (MD 10-1) 139: Elijah Rieser (NUA) over Dawson DeCamp (MARS) (Dec 4-1) 145: Tyson Louwagie (MARS) over Braxton Kiecker (NUA) (Dec 4-3) 152: Drew Chandler (MARS) over Candon Briggs (NUA) (Dec 7-0) 160: Brayden Chandler (MARS) over Dirk Haynes (NUA) (TF 15-0 4:00) 172: Joshua Kraft (MARS) over Cole Voges (NUA) (Fall 1:09) 189: Wyatt Pollard (NUA) over Aidan Mattison (MARS) (Dec 11-6) 215: Gavin Schaefer (MARS) over Lane Ruch (NUA) (Dec 7-1) 285: Jamisen Frederickson (NUA) over Brooks Hess (MARS) (Fall 1:13) (NUA unsportsmanlike -1.0)